This broadening participation research project will contribute to foundational knowledge about the hidden threats to mathematics performance that undergraduate students who are deaf and hard-of-hearing experience. There is a significant need to determine how to better educate deaf and hard-of-hearing college students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). This group of students represents an untapped potential for contributing to the STEM workforce and for better learning the STEM skills needed to work in our technology-driven society. Deaf individuals represent 3.5% of the eligible workforce in our country, but only 0.8% of deaf undergraduate students major in STEM and less than 0.2% of doctoral recipients in STEM are deaf. It is essential to understand the threats these students experience in college STEM education and, eventually, to implement the appropriate educational practices and interventions that will result in more deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students majoring in STEM and working in STEM fields.
Project leaders at Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Rochester will investigate the nature and existence of negative stereotypes towards deaf and hard-of-hearing college students, and study the impact of stereotype threat on the mathematical problem solving of this student cohort. Using social identity theory as the grounding for their work, the researchers will conduct three studies. The first investigation will involve the use of a modified implicit association task to study the stereotypes of the deaf and hard-of-hearing related to mathematics among both hearing and deaf subjects. The second experimental study will involve testing stereotype threat conditions during performance of mathematics problems involving logic, estimation and actions that inhibit the tendency to perform calculations. The third study will examine how stereotype threat in deaf and hard-of-hearing subjects may degrade working memory as it relates to completing mathematics problems. Results of these studies are expected to be shared with education researchers and the public in professional publications.
