Black and STEM and… : Lessons Learned From Focus Groups Around Black Students’ Multiple Identities

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: STEM in Black Education to Challenge Inequity (Table 8)

Abstract

The Georgia site of a collaborative research project is responsible for recruiting and thereafter conducting focus group interviews with a minimum of 125 Black STEM students at institutions across the state. This paper is about the process of creating subgroups around multiple Black identities, the rationale behind the subgroups, and some of the preliminary findings and wonderings around the data we are collecting. We use the information to think about whether these identities are central to these students, and why. The purpose of exploring this question resides in the idea that certain identities may be more salient to these students and their recognition of them may inform the way they interpret the environment in which they are pursing their majors.

Authors

• Nickolaus A. Ortiz, Georgia State University

• Angela-Faith Thomas, Georgia State University

• LaTeisha Andrews, Georgia State University

• Cameron Gilliam, Georgia State University

• Shawn Irons, Georgia State University

• Paris Iyamu, Georgia State University