Title: Integration as perpetuation: Learning from race evasive approaches to ESL program reform.
Background: Currently, most Latinx emergent bilingual (EB) students are educated in English-medium programs alongside English-dominant peers. Legally mandated social integration of EB students coincides with a prescriptive linguistic emphasis on content-language integration in ESL (English as a second language) programs; both integrative approaches are particularly salient in the current hyper-racial climate in the United States. Focus of Study: We explore two schools’ responses to Latinx EB population growth via the intersecting racial and language ideologies informing and influenced by programmatic changes, educator perceptions, and pedagogical practices. Research Design: This qualitative multiple case study spans two Texas schools selected by purposeful maximal sampling over the course of two separate academic years. Data include semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, and participant observations. Findings: We find that institutional structures across the sites tended to promote a denial of responsibility for racial stratification and a concomitant disciplining of the school curriculum. We argue that both integrative approaches ultimately perpetuated white racial domination. Conclusions/Recommendations: We suggest that ESL research and practice would benefit from an explicit questioning of racializing discourses and boundaries of academic disciplines as part of a racially literate critical practice designed to counter the normalization of whiteness. more »« less
LaCosse, Jennifer; Canning, Elizabeth A.; Bowman, Nicholas A.; Murphy, Mary C.; Logel, Christine
(, Science Advances)
null
(Ed.)
Students who speak English as a second language (ESL) are underserved and underrepresented in postsecondary science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. To date, most existing research with ESL students in higher education is qualitative. Drawing from this important body of work, we investigate the impact of a social-belonging intervention on anticipated changes in belonging, STEM GPA, and proportion of STEM credits obtained in students’ first semester and first year of college. Using data from more than 12,000 STEM-interested students at 19 universities, results revealed that the intervention increased ESL students’ anticipated sense of belonging and three of the four academic outcomes. Moreover, anticipated changes in belonging mediated the intervention’s effects on these academic outcomes. Robustness checks revealed that ESL effects persisted even when controlling for other identities correlated with ESL status. Overall, results suggest that anticipated belonging is an understudied barrier to creating a multilingual and diverse STEM workforce.
Imbruce, Valerie; Jaeger, Vanessa; Rinkus, Marisa_A; Hua, Jessica; O’Rourke, Michael
(, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences)
Abstract The importance of interdisciplinary approaches for research and education in environmental studies and sciences is well known. Integration of the multiple disciplinary approaches taught in separate courses required within these undergraduate majors and minors, however, remains a challenge. Program faculty often come from different departments and do not have time or space to integrate their own approaches with each other, resulting in individual ways of understanding interdisciplinarity. Secondly, senior capstone, thesis, or other project-based degree requirements often come too late in an undergraduate education to design an integrative project. Students would benefit from prior training in identifying complementary or divergent approaches and insights among academic specializations—a skill built from raising interdisciplinary consciousness. We present a workshop designed to enhance undergraduates’ interdisciplinary consciousness that can be easily deployed within courses or co-curricular programs, specifically summer research programs that are focused on dedicated practice within a field of study. The central question of this project is: How do we facilitate interdisciplinary consciousness and assess its impact on our students? We propose a promising, dialogue-based intervention that can be easily replicated. This dialogue would benefit academic programs like environmental studies and sciences that require the interaction and integration of discipline-based norms. We found that our dialogue intervention opens students’ perspectives on the nature of research, who research is for, epistemological differences, and the importance of practicing the research process, a unique educational experience. These perspectives are crucial to becoming collaborative, twenty-first century professionals.
Shakour, Katie; Ransom, Tim; Gallagher, Eliza; Johnson, Karen; Short, Rebecca; Beck, Jonathan; Chalil_Madathil, Kapil
(, New Directions for Community Colleges)
Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic caused an abrupt change in educational programs worldwide, including workforce development education in community colleges. Given the hands‐on requirements of these programs, considerations for changes included if and how instructors and students could maintain academic continuity during the pandemic. This article focuses on aviation maintenance technology schools (AMTS) as a case study to understand how programs that rely heavily on hands‐on learning responded to COVID‐19 significant disruption to education. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must approve educational training for aviation maintenance careers, and the FAA requires specific hands‐on activities in the curriculum. Of the 182 AMTS in the United States, 143 are located within community colleges. We conducted 43 interviews with AMTS students, administrators, and instructors from 18 different community colleges. Following content analysis of the interviews, the authors identified six findings related to how these programs responded to the pandemic, with special attention to maintaining academic stability. The article advocates for integrating digital learning tools (DLT) to create resilient educational programs when disruptions occur. These tools allow for students to continue to asynchronously practice the procedures and familiarize themselves with the materials needed for projects, provide students immediate feedback on their learning, and save schools money on expensive resources when students require extra practice on certain skills and processes. The application of these tools is relevant beyond the pandemic, helping students in many scenarios succeed in the face of natural disasters, family obligations, and the need for extra learning resources.
Makerspaces, intended for open and collaborative learning, often struggle to attract a diverse group of users, particularly concerning gender diversity. These issues include makerspaces becoming associated primarily with white male students, gendered connotations of machines and materials, and women’s perceived lack of self-efficacy in using makerspace tools. As a result, women may view makerspaces as unwelcoming, and societal stereotypes can affect their engagement in these spaces. Efforts to create more inclusive makerspaces are essential to fully realize the potential of makerspaces, encourage and boost confidence in marginalized groups to pursue careers in different engineering areas, and promote a diverse and collaborative maker culture. Moreover, defining makerspaces is challenging due to conflicting perceptions, the uniqueness of spaces, and the abstract elements in these environments, revealing a gap between academic definitions and the diverse voices of people interested in utilizing makerspaces. Our goal is to see if there are differences in the fundamental academic makerspace definition and makerspace definition by different genders, providing insights into how inclusive our makerspace is. We focus on gender because our interviewees focused more on gender than other identity markers in our conversations, but we also report additional demographic data that likely impacted participants’ experiences, namely, their racial and ethnic identities. Our corpus is drawn from semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in an introductory first-year engineering course. Out of 28 students interviewed, 10 identified as women, 16 as men, one as both women and questioning or unsure, and one as women and nonbinary and transgender. In terms of racial/ethnic identifications, nine participants identified as White or Caucasian; six identified as Latinx or Hispanic; five identified as Latinx or Hispanic, White or Caucasian; three identified as Black or African American; two identified as Asian, Desi, or Asian American; one identified as Latinx or Hispanic, Native American or Alaska Native; one identified as Southwest Asian, Middle Eastern, or North African, White or Caucasian; and one identified as Native African. In this ongoing study, from interview transcripts, we extracted participant responses to questions regarding their definitions of and impressions of makerspaces to identify commonalities and differences. Specifically, we use natural language processing techniques to extract word frequency and centrality and synthesize commonalities into a shared definition of a makerspace. We also separated responses from participants by gender identities to evaluate how definitions varied with gender. These emergent definitions are compared with commonly accepted definitions derived from research papers. Additionally, we conduct a complementary discourse analysis of students’ definitions and impressions of makerspaces, qualitatively examining how diverse students characterize ways of being and doing in the makerspace.
Kendall, Meagan R.; Denton, Maya; Choe, Nathan Hyungsok; Procter, Luis M.; Borrego, Maura
(, IEEE Transactions on Education)
Contribution: This study explores the factors contributing to the development of engineering identity in Latinx students at two institutions. A better understanding of these factors will support the development of more inclusive engineering education environments and experiences. Background: Persistence of Latinx engineering students is of particular interest due to their underrepresentation in the field. Identity is a lens for understanding student persistence, but Latinx students are underrepresented in prior engineering identity studies. This study seeks to identify the unique factors, academic and professional, that contribute to engineering identity development, and potential means for supporting the persistence of Latinx engineers. Research Questions: (1) What academic and professional affect factors predict engineering identity development of Latinx students? and (2) What role does the institution play in Latinx students’ engineering identity development? Methodology: A mixed-methods approach was used to measure engineering identity based on a framework incorporating both academic and professional affect elements. Regression analyses were conducted on 892 responses to an online survey from Latinx engineering students, with additional insight from interviews with ten Latinx engineering students. Findings: Six of the nine factors analyzed (performance/competence, interest, recognition, analysis, framing and solving problems, and tinkering) were significant predictors of Latinx students' engineering identity, as were institution, gender, and having a parent with an engineering degree. Engineering identity was higher for Latinx students at the Hispanic Serving Institution, but none of the interaction terms were significant, so the relationship between these factors and engineering identity is similar at each institution.
Hurie, Andrew H., and Callahan, Rebecca M. Integration as perpetuation: Learning from race evasive approaches to ESL program reform.. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10220963. Teachers College record 121.9
Hurie, Andrew H., & Callahan, Rebecca M. Integration as perpetuation: Learning from race evasive approaches to ESL program reform.. Teachers College record, 121 (9). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10220963.
Hurie, Andrew H., and Callahan, Rebecca M.
"Integration as perpetuation: Learning from race evasive approaches to ESL program reform.". Teachers College record 121 (9). Country unknown/Code not available. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10220963.
@article{osti_10220963,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Integration as perpetuation: Learning from race evasive approaches to ESL program reform.},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10220963},
abstractNote = {Background: Currently, most Latinx emergent bilingual (EB) students are educated in English-medium programs alongside English-dominant peers. Legally mandated social integration of EB students coincides with a prescriptive linguistic emphasis on content-language integration in ESL (English as a second language) programs; both integrative approaches are particularly salient in the current hyper-racial climate in the United States. Focus of Study: We explore two schools’ responses to Latinx EB population growth via the intersecting racial and language ideologies informing and influenced by programmatic changes, educator perceptions, and pedagogical practices. Research Design: This qualitative multiple case study spans two Texas schools selected by purposeful maximal sampling over the course of two separate academic years. Data include semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, and participant observations. Findings: We find that institutional structures across the sites tended to promote a denial of responsibility for racial stratification and a concomitant disciplining of the school curriculum. We argue that both integrative approaches ultimately perpetuated white racial domination. Conclusions/Recommendations: We suggest that ESL research and practice would benefit from an explicit questioning of racializing discourses and boundaries of academic disciplines as part of a racially literate critical practice designed to counter the normalization of whiteness.},
journal = {Teachers College record},
volume = {121},
number = {9},
author = {Hurie, Andrew H. and Callahan, Rebecca M.},
editor = {null}
}
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