A Critical Autoethnography of a First-Generation Black Woman in STEM Navigating Help-Seeking

• In Event: Reimagining Help-Seeking Contexts for Minoritized College Students: Toward Equity-Focused and Asset-Based Research

Abstract

Objectives
This study’s purpose was to examine how inequities pertain to academic help-seeking (AHS), I conducted a critical autoethnographic study to examine my AHS experiences as a Black woman and first-generation college student (FGCS) in STEM.

Theoretical Perspectives
The decision to seek help requires the awareness that help is needed and identifying where, from whom, and how one will seek help (Nelson-Le Gall,1981) (Figure 1). Researchers have produced extensive scholarship on the situated and contextual nature of AHS (e.g., Bergey, 2023; Richards, 2020; Zusho & Barnett, 2011). Despite the advantages of seeking help in academic settings, such as sense of belonging and achievement (e.g., Fong et al., 2023; Won et al., 2021), there can be a cost or risk to seeking help for FGCSs and students of Color (e.g., emotional threat or being dismissed) (Payne et al., 2021). Furthermore, there is a hidden curriculum of AHS (Johnson, 2022), that renders AHS inaccessible for minoritized students.

To critically expand AHS literature, I employed Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is an academic framework that examines the interrelationships of race, racism, and systems of power (Bell, 1995; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1998) (Table 1). Positioning AHS with CRT provides an intersectional analysis of how structural and gendered racism impacts the norms, practices, and interactions when seeking help.

Method
I deployed a critical autoethnographic methodology (Likely & Wright, 2022; Orbe, 2014) to investigate my undergraduate education experiences as a Black cisgender woman and FGCS (i.e., neither parent obtained a four-year college degree) majoring in chemistry as an aspiring high school science teacher. I leveraged CRT (Table 1) and AHS (Figure 1) to situate my narratives, particularly how I navigated spaces and systems when seeking help and giving help.

To externalize these memories, I conducted reflective journaling upon engaging with various data sources such as academic memorabilia, conversations with mentors, and photographs. Aligning with the iterative nature of autoethnographic research (Orbe, 2014), my data analysis process was reflexive and ongoing. I used narrative analysis to generate my data in the form of stories and the CRT tenets, intersectionality (in relation to my race, gender, and first-generation status), and (counter)storytelling heavily grounded these stories. After generating the narratives, I conducted another round of reflective journaling, particularly paying attention to my past and present emotionality to understand the internal experience of AHS.

Findings and Scholarly Significance
From the narratives, I identified three themes, a) Collaborative or Isolating; b) Being Weeded Out; c)Working Twice as Hard (see Table 2). Overall, my personal narratives demonstrate my journey of embracing racial realism, how that shaped how, where, and from whom I sought help, and how negative AHS experiences impacted my learning and success.

This study offers a critical perspective on AHS by centering the experiential knowledge of a minoritized student in STEM, which has implications for facilitating equitable help-seeking experiences. Future implications are for STEM departments to critically examine under what conditions, for whom, and at what cost their help-seeking resources support their learning of minoritized students.

Author

• Destiny Williams-Dobosz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign