Rethinking Research on Racial Equity in STEM Education: From Leaky Pipelines to Educational Ecosystems

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Systematizing Equity and Justice in Science Teaching and Learning (Table 12)

Abstract

This paper raises questions about the “leaky pipelines” heuristic referred to widely in the STEM education equity literature. This heuristic, we argue, although intended to help address educational inequities, instead plays a role in perpetuating deficit perspectives by treating student characteristics as the cause of inequitable outcomes. This leads to efforts to “fix” students so as to keep them in the pipeline, rather than addressing the institutional and systemic barriers that push them out. Such reform efforts underestimate the complexity of structural racism. As an alternative, we suggest that an educational ecosystem heuristic would be a more appropriate and effective means of understanding and responding to the problem of racial inequity in STEM undergraduate education.

Authors

• Tristan G. Gleason, California State Polytechnic University - Humboldt

• Jerry L. Rosiek, University of Oregon