Denise Sekaquaptewa - US grants

Standardized test scores and grade point averages indicate that, on average, racial minority students do not perform as well as White students. Although factors such as socioeconomic status and quality of education are often suggested as explanations for this difference, laboratory research in social psychology suggests that individuals who are highly distinctive in their social environments tend to show weaker memory and problem solving skills. Thus, minority college students may be hindered in their performance because in most college environments they experience high social distinctiveness. This research planning grant will investigate the process by which racial distinctiveness negatively affects academic performance among minority, but not majority, group members. It is proposed that being the only member of one's race present in the environment (an experience termed "solo status") may change one's perception of the self (i.e., one's "self-construal"). This is expected to happen differently for African-Americans and Whites. It is predicted that when an African-American is the only Black person in a testing situation, being Black becomes a greater part of that person's self-construal, and the person feels more representative of and more accountable to members of their racial group. Whites, on the other hand, are not predicted to adopt this group-based self-construal. A White person may perceive the self in individualistic terms, and not feel representative of or accountable to other Whites as solos. Two experiments will be conducted in a laboratory setting, using appropriate comparison groups, to test 1) whether solo status induces a more group-based self-construal for African-Americans than for Whites; 2) whether African-Americans in solo status perform more poorly than a control group because of the added pressure of representing their race; and 3) whether African-Americans in solo status avoid highly challenging tasks compared to a control group, to avoid the potential of being a poor representative of their race. This research will help us understand why Whites and Blacks perform differently in school even though they may have comparable educational preparation. This research will be useful in designing programs to stop the negative effects of solo status for racial minorities in the classroom, and will have implications for job performance in business settings as well.

This is a proposal for a workshop that will focus on empirical research related to the representation and participation of women, minorities and persons with disabilities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The aim of the workshop is to bring together a broad array of researchers whose work informs a Science of Broadening Participation. Knowledge that is derived from a Science of Broadening Participation can further our understanding of what does and does not work to increase the scientific talent pool. A Science of Broadening Participation would employ a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to answer research questions related to issues of access, opportunity and inclusion in STEM fields. Fundamentally, it would address important questions that deal with the inequitable distribution of educational and economic opportunities, and demonstrate the ways in which this inequity impacts the achievement of women and underrepresented minorities. The Workshop will include a small group of 25-30 distinguished scientists working in the science of broadening participation across the fields represented within the Social, Behavioral and Economic (SBE) sciences as well as a few scientists from other areas engaged in the work of broadening participation in STEM. The 2-day workshop will take place at the National Science Foundation, June 23-24, 2008.

Intellectual merit: Women studying in fields non-traditional for women, including science and engineering, are proposed to show a spontaneous pattern of implicit achievement attribution, termed "stereotypic attributional bias" (SAB). SAB is defined as a subtle form of stereotypic bias in which women's science and engineering successes are spontaneously attributed to external causes (such as luck) and their failures spontaneously attributed to internal causes (such as lack of ability). This research explores whether the tendency to engage in SAB is promoted by being in educational environments perceived as unwelcoming to women. Features of unwelcoming environments include having few or no other female colleagues or role models, and witnessing subtle behavioral biases favoring men. It is proposed that female students pursuing science and engineering may come to engage in SAB, independent of their explicitly stated beliefs about women and science, as a result of stereotypic messages encountered in their environments.

This research unites three strong theoretical perspectives (gender distinctiveness, implicit stereotyping, and achievement attribution) to advance understanding of women's lower participation in science and engineering compared to men. The SAB concept is a unique contribution based on sound research evidence in social psychology placed in a new theoretical framework, i.e. as an unintended, implicit attributional bias that is increased by stereotypic environmental cues and that influences academic outcomes. This project also promotes both basic experimental and applied intervention approaches to understanding, predicting, and improving academic outcomes among female science students.

In seven laboratory studies, the research tests these hypotheses: 1) female students in settings perceived to be unwelcoming to women [e.g., male-dominated settings and/or those in which behavioral biases favoring men exist] will show greater SAB than women in settings more welcoming to women; 2) SAB predicts diminished motivation for and performance in science and engineering among women; 3) female science and engineering students who do not evince SAB show increased academic persistence after success feedback, whereas women who engage in SAB do not; 4) the implications of SAB will be different for White vs. African American women due to differences in the content of stereotypes regarding their race/ethnicity; and 5) an intervention designed to reduce SAB can improve women's science outcomes, as a result of increasing internal attributions for their science and engineering success.

Broader impacts: The proposed research advances discovery about factors influencing female science students while promoting teaching, training and learning as undergraduate and graduate students will participate fully as student collaborators in all aspects of the project. Members of underrepresented groups will participate in the proposed research, as this project focuses directly on an important underrepresented population (women in science), and reserves key roles for racial minority and majority male and female students as research assistants as well as respondents. The proposed research will serve to enhance infrastructure for research and education, as computer technologies will be developed and collaborative contacts will be made with the university's Center for Research and Learning on Teaching, the College of Engineering, and related departments, encouraging and facilitating future research collaborations. Broad dissemination of the results of the research will include research presentations and publications, in both psychology and education journals. Moreover, these results will be shared with educational, research, and diversity programs. Finally, this project will offer important and significant benefits to society, as understanding the processes influencing women in science is critical in moving toward the goal of greater representation of women in science and scientific innovation.

This engineering education research initiation grant will implement a rigorous experimental methodology to examine the impact of team activities on the self-efficacy of women engineering students. The research project engages complementary expertise in engineering and psychology, and builds on existing networks and resources at the PIs institution.

The broader significance and importance of this project arises from the increasing importance of teams in engineering courses and curricula. Since recent research demonstrates the impact of self-efficacy on how well students learn, this work can broadly inform efforts to produce a better trained engineering workforce. A vigorous plan to disseminate the results of this research is proposed. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by creating results and research that are useful for society by informing educational policy and practices.

Because engineering is cast as a masculine field, women engineering students can experience subtle yet pervasive stereotypic messages in their learning environments that can negatively influence their experiences. This early stage research project will identify specific behavioral manifestations of gender stereotypes--microaggressions--and their cumulative effect on learning, performance, and persistence in introductory engineering course teamwork. Such microaggressions may cause the climate of the team to become less welcoming to women. The proposed research unites two areas of strong research interest (social science research on gender stereotypes and engineering education on teamwork and climate) to advance understanding of women's underrepresentation in engineering as compared to men.

The goal of the project is to identify and reliably measure microaggressions in both lab-based and classroom-based engineering student project teams. The research will test whether exposure to microaggressions increases perceived stereotype threat and diminishes a sense of belonging in engineering for women compared to men, leading to a gender gap favoring men in the important engineering outcomes of learning, performance, and persistence. The research program builds on prior NSF-funded work of the investigators and includes five research activities. The goal of Study One is to identify the specific types of microaggressions (e.g., ignoring women's contributions or assigning women to less important tasks) occurring in videotaped laboratory-based engineering teams. Researchers will develop a reliable microaggressions assessment procedure, and will analyze effects on engineering outcomes (learning, performance, and persistence). In Study Two, the lab-based data will be supplemented with qualitative data reported by students who previously participated in an engineering student group project, via student focus groups. Study Three will examine the influence of microaggressions occurring in class-based teams on engineering outcomes over time. Introductory engineering student teams will be tracked and observed at three time points in one semester to measure microaggressions and their influence on academic and psychological outcomes. In studies Four and Five engineering students (both women and men) will be randomly assigned to view one of two videos showing student teams in which microaggressions are present or absent in team interactions. The researchers will analyze the effects of the different videos on the students knowledge of the content of the video and their persistence in solving problems.

Women have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields, and research evidence suggests that subtle gender bias occurs in many STEM settings, especially those where women continue to be underrepresented. Social psychological research has demonstrated the negative effects of perceived bias or becoming aware that one is the target of stereotyping and discrimination. This project will provide a novel contribution to and extension of the perceived bias research by proposing that simply witnessing instances of subtle gender bias can have differential effects on observers depending on whether they recognize the event as an instance of gender stereotyping. When witnesses observe stereotypic interactions but do not perceive them as instances of gender stereotyping, the interactions serve as a subtle stereotype cue that promotes stereotype-supporting outcomes. When witnesses to bias do recognize the stereotypic interactions as instances of gender stereotyping, the interactions serve as a blatant stereotype cue promoting stereotype-defying outcomes. The researchers will undertake a series of studies designed to experimentally test the effects of subtle vs. blatant stereotype activation (cued by witnessing bias on men and women in computer science and engineering contexts) focusing on performance, motivation, evaluation of peers, and group dynamics. The findings will inform ongoing and future intervention efforts aimed at raising awareness of and mitigating negative effects of gender bias in the STEM environment. The proposed project is a joint effort between the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and Michigan Technological University and is supported by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.

This research effort will advance the discovery and understanding of mechanisms by which the presence of subtle gender bias influences the climate for men and women in STEM by specifically exploring process differences for blatant and implicit bias cues. The work will provide insight into the influences of these cues on performance and motivation among women, as well as the behaviors of men and women in groups and on teams. One strength of this work is the use of experimental methodology (i.e. randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to study the effects of witnessing subtle bias. Using RCTs provides a rigorous test of a causal relationship between exposure to subtle bias and its purported consequences. Moreover, this research project will also expand research and theory on the effects of experienced discrimination, by examining these effects on witnesses of bias, including men, with important downstream consequences. By exploring these relationships, the research will afford better understanding of how the awareness and attribution of subtle gender bias may modify outcomes for everyone in the setting. This understanding may inform ongoing and future intervention efforts aimed at raising awareness of and mitigating negative outcomes of gender bias in the STEM environment.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.