The Howard University HBCU-UP Broadening Participation Research in STEM Education project is entitled Broadening STEM Participation of African American Males. The proposed project is designed to use the Engagement, Capacity and Continuity (ECC) theory to address issues associated with the underrepresentation of African American males in STEM. The objectives are to (1) identify the relationship between mathematics achievement and race-by-gender, engagement, capacity, and continuity variables and (2) develop, validate, and administer a psychometrically sound instrument that describes the ECC characteristics and experiences of African American males majoring in STEM disciplines. The proposal responds to recent calls for research specifically focused on African American males in STEM to help inform practice.
Using the ECC Trilogy for Student Success as the theoretical framework, the study is designed to identify factors that facilitate or serve as barriers to African American males' interest, experiences, and success in STEM disciplines. It will employ a two-phased approach to test the hypotheses: Phase 1 will examine relationships between race-by-gender interactions and ECC-related factors on math achievement using data from the Department of Education High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. Phase 2 will use the results and findings of Phase 1 to develop, validate, and administer an instrument to examine ECC characteristics and experiences of African American males majoring in STEM disciplines to ascertain the relationship between the instrument results and undergraduate STEM achievement. The project's potentially transformative influence lies in its ability to disentangle the issues of race and gender and their relationship to factors found to influence STEM interest and success. The findings could be especially useful to major research universities facing race/ethnicity and gender issues in their recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups in STEM.
