Developing Researcher Identities With PURPOSE: Partners United for Research Pathways Oriented to Social Justice in Education

• In Event: Increasing Diversity in Higher Education: A Look at the Pathways to the Educational Sciences Program

Abstract

To address lack of diversity in higher education, PURPOSE, a preparatory program for doctoral studies, coordinated by Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (a HBCU) and the Florida State University (a PMI), enhances the undergraduate-to-graduate pipeline through a promising research-training model for diverse fellows. PURPOSE recruits diverse undergraduates and master’s students as fellows and supports their development as culturally-relevant researchers. Designed to help fellows develop a support system that encourages their research contributions to impact social justice in education—fellows become active members of the education research community. PURPOSE PIs and mentors will share the program’s professional socialization model, particularly focusing on aspects supporting fellows’ researcher-identity development.
We believe socialization is key to succeeding in graduate school. Career socialization includes imparting values, norms, knowledge, and beliefs to a new member (Johnson, 2001; LaRocco & Bruns, 2006). In addition to career socialization (i.e., into the academy), success at the graduate level depends on academic and professional development as well as constructive mentoring relationships (Hagedorn & Nora, 1996; Wao & Onwuegbuzie, 2011). While graduate education can be demanding for all students, the challenges experienced by underrepresented students make factors of academic support and mentoring particularly salient for their socialization into academia (Lundy-Wagner, Vultaggio, & Gasman, 2013). Because underrepresented students may experience marginalization resulting from racism, sexism, and classism (Solorzano & Villalpando, 1998), without adequate socialization, particularly mentoring, (Dixon-Reeves, 2003), they may experience isolation (Ellis, 2001). Using Bertrand Jones and Osborne-Lampkin’s (2013) model for postsecondary socialization of underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, fellows receive training in three contexts: academic knowledge, research mentoring, and professional development (Figure 1). Fellows participate in yearlong experiences including research-training, research-mentoring, and biweekly proseminars. Components are organized around conducting transformative educational research using an anti-deficit perspective leading to service-learning research practica at Children’s Defense Fund (CDF, 2015) Freedom Schools summer camps for K-8 children from low-income, African American, or Latinx households.
We present mixed-methods results from our program evaluation based on the following data-sources: semi-structured interviews with 10/11 of the first cohort of fellows about their experiences with the program, and descriptive statistics from 11/11 fellows’ surveys about their research-efficacy and 10/11 on their research-training environments.
Following PURPOSE, fellows rated the PURPOSE research-training environment more favorably compared with their home academic research environment (Tables 1 & 2). On a 100% confidence scale, fellows reported an average confidence of 76.76% for conducting research before and 86.44% confidence after completing PURPOSE: one declined, three with the highest initial confidence remained the same, and seven increased 3 to 33 percentage points. Fellows described how PURPOSE helped them link their commitment to social justice to research, support their development of researcher-identities, increase their confidence in their research skills, and expand their professional network (Table 3).
Our results suggest promising ways faculty can support early socialization to graduate school to increase diversity in higher education. Moreover, fellows’ conduct has been viewed as responsive to the needs of Freedom Schools in the summer practicum. Aspects of PURPOSE fellows identified as supporting their researcher-identity development address AERA’s theme.

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Authors

• Alysia D. Roehrig, Florida State University

• Novell E. Tani, Florida A&M University

• Tamara Bertrand Jones, Florida State University

• Erik Scott Rawls, Florida State University

• Jeannine E. Turner, Florida State University

• Julieth Paola Diaz, Florida State University

• Peggy Perkins Auman, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University