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Research shows that family conversations about STEM topics positively influence children’s STEM identity development. This study expands on these findings by exploring how family conversations beyond STEM content contribute to this development. Specifically, we focus on how non-academic forms of family support—as described by students who face systemic racial discrimination in STEM—shape these conversations. In this way, we extend existing work by exploring the extent to which families’ dispositions to talk about a wide range of topics—not just in STEM—might further support youth identification with STEM fields. Using Family Communication Patterns Theory (FCPT) to guide our analysis, we examined data from a survey of first-year college students (n = 1134) attending Minority-Serving Institutions and public universities in the United States. The survey asked students to reflect on their childhood conversations and their current sense of identity in STEM. Using structural equation modeling, we found that family disposition to engage in conversations about a broad range of topics was linked to more frequent STEM-related conversations during childhood and, in turn, greater identification as a “STEM person” in college. These findings highlight the complex ways that family communication patterns can support construction of an individual’s sense of themselves as a STEM person in later years. By interpreting these findings using FCPT, we highlight the nature of family communication patterns that can contribute to STEM identity formation. 

Abstract How individuals come to perceive themselves in STEM is predicated on their understanding of what it means to be a member of the STEM community. This association is consequential when considering the perpetuation of white male ownership of STEM knowledge and power that forces learners identifying with groups systemically marginalized by racial and gender discrimination to adopt particular norms, values, and behaviors to gain recognition. In effect, these expectations help to maintain masculinized Discourses as STEM professionals are encultured to apply the same recognition criteria to which they were judged themselves. We examine how these Discourses are maintained even as learners who identify with groups that carry histories of systemic marginalization by racist, sexist, and elitist practices gain access to STEM communities. Specifically, we explore how university STEM students attending a Hispanic Serving Institution in the United States articulate gendered expectations of STEM membership through their characterization of themselves and others as (not) STEM people. Drawing from theories in Discourse, social identity, and feminist critiques of science, we describe how students implicitly recognize STEM identity in gendered ways. We discuss how our findings illuminate the mechanisms by which STEM recognition is afforded by pointing to its dependence on masculinized displays of STEM performances, competence, and interests, leading to a cycle of marginalization as learners are encultured to perpetuate existing STEM Discourses in their recognition of others. We discuss research implications for measurements of STEM identity that do not account for gendered Discourses and offer practical implications for the design of learning experiences that co‐opt existing Discourses to inoculate gendered perceptions of a STEM person prototype. Lastly, we present a case for elevating the role of maternal caregivers and family immigration histories in STEM identity construction. 

Concepts in science education such as “science identity” and “science capital” are informed by dominant epistemological and ontological positions, which translate into assumptions about what counts as science and whose science counts. In this theoretical paper we draw on decolonial and antiracist perspectives to examine these assumptions in light of the heterogeneous onto-epistemological and axiological values, cultural perspectives, and contributions of nondominant groups, and specifically of those who have been historically marginalized based on their gender, race, ethnic, age, and/or social class identity. Building on these arguments, we critique deficit-based approaches to science teaching, learning, and research, including those that focus on systemic injustice, yet leave intact dominant framings of the scientific enterprise, which are exclusionary and meritocratic. As an alternative, we offer a design of science teaching and learning for the pluriverse—“a world where many worlds fit”. This alternative allows us to reconstruct science and science-related “outcomes,” such as identity, in the service of cultural, epistemic, and linguistic pluralism. We close the paper with the idea that because mainstream theories reproduce deficit framings and educational injustices, we must engage with decolonial1 theories of pluriversality and discuss different onto-epistemologies to be able to grapple with existing social, racial, environmental injustices, and land-based devastations. 

An individual's sense of themselves as a “STEM person” is largely formed through recognition feedback. Un- fortunately, for many minoritized individuals who engage in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathe- matics) in formal and informal spaces, this recognition often adheres to long!standing exclusionary expectations of what STEM participation entails and institutionalized stereotypes of what it means to be a STEM person. However, caregivers, who necessarily share cultural backgrounds, norms, and values with their children, can play an important role in recognizing their children's in- terest and inclination towards STEM in ways that support children's authoring of their STEM identity in the face of these marginalizing discourses. To explore this idea, we conducted phenomenological interviews with STEM stu- dents attending a Hispanic!serving university, examining the nature of STEM!related conversations these students had with their parents during childhood. Participant re- collections provide evidence of conversational content, contexts, and structures that supported their identifica- tion with STEM even when faced with marginalizing ex- periences. We found that though this phenomenon was recounted across parent profiles, participant narratives also reflected differences in conversation content, con- text, and structure based on factors associated with STEM stereotypes, including gender, formal education or training in STEM, and parents' immigration experiences. Viewed within larger sociocultural discourses of whose knowledge “counts” in STEM, our work suggests the need for edu- cational institutions to acknowledge and embrace families' ability to foster youths' affinity with STEM contexts, while also recognizing and responding to institutionalized im- pediments to authentic STEM participation. 

Despite the wealth of research exploring science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) identity and career goals in both formal and informal settings, existing literature does not consider STEM identity for undergraduate students pursuing health and medical careers through STEM pathways. We address this gap by examining the STEM identity of undergraduate STEM majors on pre-med/health tracks as it compares with that of other STEM majors, thus focusing on a population that is chronically understudied in STEM education research. We surveyed 440 undergraduate STEM students enrolled in entry-level STEM courses to assess their STEM identities and three identity precursors: interest, performance–competence, and recognition. Through regression analyses accounting for gender, major, and perceived home support around STEM, we found that pre-med/health students were more likely to have higher STEM identity and recognition scores than their peers; we did not detect a significant difference for performance–competence or interest in STEM. Although there is little tracking of pre-med/health students’ ultimate career attainment, the implications of our findings support a potential for sustaining pre-med/health students while simultaneously creating pathways to other STEM pursuits for the nearly 60% of those who do not enter medical school by offering participation in experiences that affirm their STEM identities.