Latinas' Erasure From STEM Fields: The Role of Teachers and Schools in Their Underrepresentation

• In Event: Education as a Source of Erasure and Resilience in the Lives of Latina Women

Abstract

Latinas are acutely underrepresented in science and engineering fields (ASEE, 2015). The author explores the role teachers and schools play in erasing Latinas’ potential interest in science and engineering careers. For the Latina participants, the erasure of their math and science identities took place within their figured world of school (Holland et al., 1998). In the US figured world of school, math and science classes are considered the crowning jewels of intelligence gathering—only the most successful/intelligent students (as measured by grades) are recommended to advance into Calculus, Chemistry, Physics or Honors/Regents and AP classes (i.e., AP Bio, Physics, Calculus).  Students in these classes are constructed as the most intelligent in the school: nerds or geeks. And these classes are perceived as hard and time-consuming, requiring long hours of work and thus little work/life balance.

The author analyzed the narratives of 16 low-income, 12th graders Latina adolescents who selected the most advanced science and math classes available in their high school—honors or advanced placement (AP)—and maintain a B+ average in them. They ranged in ages from 17-19, and were drawn from New York City public schools as well as the narrative of Graciela to provide a counternarrative as to the reasons of these under representation.

Using a holistic-content perspective analysis (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998), the author uses Holland et al.’s (1998) Identity in Practice theory to illuminate how students, led by teachers and schools actions/inactions, erase their STEM identities by placing themselves as social actors within cultural worlds in relation to the characters, events, and interactions that occupied those worlds. Anzaldúa’s (1987) concept of living in Nepantla, is also used to explain how the Latinas’ dual frame of reference inform their career choices. Lastly, the author uses Engeström and Sannino’s (2011) work to show the contradictions, social struggles and conflicts that contribute to Latinas’ self-authoring of their identities. These conceptual frameworks take into account the interplay between social structure and individual agency, as Latinas negotiate broader gender, ethnic and racial issues. It also acknowledges how racism or sexism is persistently present in the caring narratives perpetuated within the school context (Delgado-Bernal, 2002) in addition to elucidating the complex and pervasive ways in which histories, lives, and communities are racialized or genderized and how in this process Latinas science and math identities are erased.  

The finding suggests that teachers and schools in the United States indeed play a critical role in their underrepresentation. School systemic issues such as irrelevant curricula, the culture of science, and the science classroom collided with teachers’ lack of solid math and science instruction, rigor, and discouragements threatening Latina’s affirmation of self as math and science oriented students and leading to the erasure of math and science identities. These findings may inform policymakers and administrators about how schools and teachers contribute to the erasure of Latina’s interest in STEM fields, and an understanding of how their actions/inactions affect cognitive and affective systems to discourage Latina’s career interests, goals and curricular choices. 

Author

• Minosca Victoria Alcantara, MTA Capital Construction