Synthesizing Community Cultural Wealth With STEM Communities of Practice for Students of Color

• In Event: 67.070 - Sheraton Roundtable 14 - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 67.070-2 - Role of Communities and Networks in Supporting Students in STEM

Abstract

Community cultural wealth (CCW) is a framework that importantly challenges deficit narratives about the participation of students of color in higher education. Studies from engineering education have adopted this framework to illustrate different types of community capital contributing to students’ motivation and focus for persisting in engineering. This paper synthesizes the framework of CCW with the framework of communities of practice (CoP) from sociocultural theory. Participating and thus integrating into the undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) CoP serves as a potential explanatory mechanism for students’ persistence. This synthesis also extends the CoP framework by centralizing race in its analysis. Data illustration comes from interviews with five Latinx students about their STEM experiences.

Authors

• Aditya P. Adiredja, The University of Arizona

• Jocelyn Rios, The University of Arizona