Reference no: EM133601483

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ABSTRACT

Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) have representation and achievement gaps relative to the majority at all levels of science education and beyond. We suggest that majority groups defining the definitions and measures of success may exert "soft power" over minoritized student success.

INTRODUCTION

Although the U.S. population has increased substantially over the last 10 years, minority populations still represent a minority of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) bachelor's recipients, 13% of STEM doctoral recipients, and 4% of R1 faculty. This can negatively affect BIPOC students' persistence, well-being, and academic achievement.

Differentials in student success have been discussed for at least a quarter century within education research, but the state of BIPOC representation and persistence within STEM domains broadly suggests that these initiatives have not succeeded.

What Is Success?

To study and facilitate student success, we must first understand what we mean when we say "success". This is difficult because the term "success" has a variety of meanings both within and outside the domain of biology education, and a singular, unifying definition is largely impossible.

Within biology education, we believe that current definitions of success may lack the requisite diversity to fully capture the contexts of all students. These definitions are created and maintained by those who hold power, and rarely include meaningful student input.

We argue that the current discourse around student success is limited by social hierarchies that unwittingly reinforce and reproduce social hierarchies within our education system. A critical evaluation of success within higher education is imperative.

Why Social Hierarchies Are Relevant to the Definition of Success

This essay assumes an institutional reproduction of social hierarchies and is framed by cultural hegemony and critical race theory. Hegemony is used to explain the power relations between dominant and minority groups and how dominant groups exert "soft power" over nondominant groups to secure and maintain control within society.

Critical race theory (CRT) identifies how dominant narratives around race and racism are often used to subordinate minoritized groups and maintain white supremacy in the United States. These stereotypes establish a cultural norm that is upheld through differences in expectations, school funding, and punishment. While seemingly inert, dominant frameworks translate into policies and structures that harm minoritized students by advancing the education of white students and justifying modern-day segregation and deficit notions of BIPOC students. Using a CRT lens, we can explore how our current definitions and metrics of success are founded on racist principles.

Hegemony and CRT can be maintained in higher education by normalizing a restrictive view of student success. This view ignores large parts of students' well-being and may impede the retention of some minoritized students. Many CRT scholars have noted that BIPOC students in the US education system are forced to "assimilate" into dominant, Eurocentric paradigms, which limits their social mobility and reinforces existing social hierarchies.

We do not believe that institutions or educators who promote individual, quantitative definitions of success suppress minoritized students. Instead, we believe that by listening to new voices and considering new definitions of success, education researchers can take the first step toward changing the system that prevents students from achieving success equally.

How Biology Education Researchers Define Success

In this article we argue that current definitions of student success are limited, and that this is true across STEM domains. We explore how success is discussed and defined in biology education research articles over the past 5 years, and note what theoretical frameworks seem to be shaping research on student success.

We used a standard literature review methodology to collect data from 52 articles published within the last 5 years on student success in higher education. These articles were specifically focused on research on student success in higher education.

The Majority of Articles Discussing Student Success Did Not Explicitly Define the Term

Of the 52 articles, 21 (40%) gave explicit definitions of student success, and the remaining 31 defined student success implicitly through the variables they measured. There were four broad categories for how the concept was defined: academic, persistence, career, and social.

There Were Many Different Ways to Measure Success, and Most Were Quantitative

The majority of papers measured at least one quantitative outcome related to student success, followed by persistence measurements, exam scores, and course grades.

The outcome of student persistence was measured in many different variations in the articles. There were 20 articles measuring student success as some aspect of persistence, attrition, or retention, and these were divided into five subcategories based on the authors' description of the outcome variable.

Theories of Student Success Have Changed over Time

Many articles cited theories to guide their work, including self-efficacy, identity, sense of belonging, social cognitive career theory, and social interdependence theory. These theories can be vehicles of hegemonic influence that set the standard for how student success is measured and discussed.

Although the term "student success" has been discussed in the education literature for more than a century, most theories mentioned in the articles we examined were more recent in origin.

In the 1950s and 1960s, universal quantitative measures were some of the first measures of student success. In the 1970s and 1980s, theories of student success layered internal development factors, like motivation and self-regulation, on top of interactions among personal characteristics and proximal environmental influences to explain student success.

While new ideas of success push the field forward, many of the theories are still framed by antiquated, racist notions that undermine their ability to reflect the experiences of BIPOC students.

The use of majority students as the foundation for the theories central to the ideas underlying student success is problematic and harmful to minority students.

Despite the expansion of our theoretical understanding of student success over the past century, many definitions and metrics of success have remained stubbornly unchanging. We argue that measuring quantitative outcomes is not a panacea for understanding how students achieve success in academia.

Who Gets to Define Student Success?

The 52 articles in LSE that discussed student success over the past five years captured only one students' own definition of success, suggesting a paucity of research in this area. Many students from historically underrepresented backgrounds reject traditional definitions of success.

Student voices are rare in the literature on student success because researchers and other institutional stakeholders may experience difficulty thinking beyond traditional definitions, and may take their positions via traditional success measures (e.g., academic success).

Hegemonic influence is hidden within everyday facets of academia. We must collectively examine and make concrete changes to many aspects of how success is defined and measured, in order to facilitate all students' definitions of success.

RECOMMENDATIONS

This Essay examines how current perspectives on student success may be contributing to unequal attainment of success. It suggests that current definitions and measures of student success are mostly academic and quantitative and are most often defined by institutional-level stakeholders, such as researchers.

Recommendations for Individual Researchers

Researchers should consider their own definitions of student success and how these definitions influence their empirical work. They should also consider what definitions of success are highlighted within their research and how they can amplify diverse perspectives and voices within that research.

Before beginning their research, researchers should self-reflect on their biases, hegemonic frames, and societal norms, and discuss and agree upon their definition(s) of student success. This decision may be guided by funding sources, participant populations, research questions, and guiding theoretical frameworks.

The study must consider the diversity of its intended population, capture the perspectives of minoritized students, and align with the definition of student success it is considering. Researchers should confirm that their chosen definition(s) of success align with the intended metric(s) within their project, justify the reason for using their chosen definition(s) over others, and acknowledge the limitations that their chosen definition(s) might present.

Researchers should consider these questions when conceptualizing success in their studies and should consider capturing diverse voices and perspectives within their research.

Recommendations for Research, Policy, and Practice

The following section focuses on actions the community can take to disrupt the current thinking about student success and reframe it for all students. We suggest that we need to truly listen to student perspectives on success at all levels.

Lundy proposed a model to conceptualize article 12 of the UNCRC, which is the right to be heard and the right to have one's views given due weight. We are adapting this model to guide discussions about how to highlight student voice in research.

Students' rights to be heard is a prerequisite for meaningful engagement with students, and this Essay aims to create space where alternative definitions of success are allowed and honored as equally valuable.

Students' voice is critical to this process, and researchers should involve students in the research process. They should also listen to graduate students, as their perspectives can add critical, new perspectives needed by researchers and institutional stakeholders to steer the field in a new direction.

Students' rights to have their views given due weight is often difficult to maintain, especially when their views challenge the dominant thinking, are expensive to enact, or cause controversy.

Students' perspectives must be presented to the appropriate audiences in order for them to have any influence over research, policy, or practice. This can be accomplished by exposing stakeholders to student voices and by involving students in the policymaking process.

Universities should incorporate nonacademic measures of success into components of course work or within graduate student evaluations. This would increase sense of belonging for all students in academia and grant advisors, departments, and institutions a more holistic picture of student development and progress.

We suggest that universities should add or amplify nonacademic support for students that honors alternative definitions of success, and direct more funding to services such as career centers, multicultural student centers and groups, and mental health support.

Rethink, Reframe, Start a Conversation- Recommendations for Practice

Faculty play a role in everyday interactions with students that can be powerful influencers of success. They need to carefully reflect on their individual influence, including their perspectives, their biases, and their words. Instructors' noncontent talk may reinforce a hegemonic view of student success in university settings, and it is important to acknowledge the difficult work involved in beginning to unpack and examine the facets of internalized racism.

ENACTING CHANGE

We recognize that raising awareness, encouraging self-reflection, and including student voice may not be enough to change the way success is framed, and suggest some ideas for institutions and organizations to enact lasting structural change.

To properly enact change, we must acknowledge the concept of "empathetic fallacy" and the risks of not expanding our definitions and metrics of success. Adding diversity will have positive impacts on student well-being, retention, and scientific problem solving. Beyond the moral imperative to become more equitable, we argue that combating the current hegemonic structures is essential for future innovation, advancement, and evolution of STEM fields. However, there are costs to not applying these recommendations.

Changing definitions of success will require transformative change at the institutional level and beyond. This type of change involves questioning the operational frameworks and assumptions under which an organization functions.

In the field of STEM education, efforts to replace lecturing with active learning have been made for many years, but diffusion of these innovations has not happened. To foster broader change, the Vision and Change initiative was started by individuals who realized that national organizations such as the NSF, AAAS, and disciplinary societies could be used to amplify change. The initiative produced two influential conference reports with data, ideas, and exemplars. We believe that changing the definitions and metrics of success requires expansive, enduring initiatives. Discipline societies, foundations, and government agencies can provide broad policy suggestions and funding initiatives to support systemic change.

CONCLUSION

Researchers, faculty, and other institutional-level stakeholders may unknowingly uphold hegemonic ideas of success by considering these dominant ideas of success to be "common sense" or standard. This reinforces social hierarchies within academia, making it more difficult for minoritized students to achieve social mobility. We call on institutions, faculty, government agencies, and other organizations to consider a more holistic view of student success, and to give student voice "due weight". We also hope that this Essay sparks collective reflection.