Who's in STEM? An Exploration of Race,Ethnicity, and Citizenship Reporting in a Federal Education Dataset

As the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse and draws more students from across the globe, more representative data are needed to understand at-risk and underrepresented populations in higher education, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The authors argue that the current reporting standards for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) result in the misrepresentation of racial and ethnic populations in STEM by forcing non-U.S. students into a “master status” category regardless of their racial or ethnic group membership. This study uses data from IPEDS and the American Community Survey to estimate the possible misrepresentation of reported bachelor degree completions by racial and ethnic group and citizenship status in the biological and biomedical sciences and engineering. We found that nearly all of the racial and ethnic groups in IPEDS may be significantly misreported because of the reporting standards for U.S. citizenship. With these findings, various implications are discussed, including higher education decision-making policies; interpretation of academic and social experiences of diverse peoples (race, ethnicity, and nationality); and creation of effective structures for academic success, particularly for students of color, regardless of citizenship.     

Can the Differences Between Education and Neuroscience be Overcome by Mind,Brain, and Education?

ABSTRACT— The new field of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE)—sometimes called educational neuroscience—is posited as a mediator between neuroscience and education. Several foundational concerns, however, can be raised about this emerging field. The differences between neuroscience and education are many, including differences in their histories, philosophies, and epistemologies. Historically, science and education have demonstrated separate, but interwoven, influences on society; philosophically, the values by which they operate are often in opposition; and epistemologically, the fields have relied on different conceptualizations of knowledge. Discussion about these differences has been largely absent in attempts to promote MBE. Two steps are proposed to respond to this omission. First, encouraging discussion about disciplinary differences and assumptions may enable better understanding between disciplines and facilitate the establishment of a more collaborative research community. Second, a transdisciplinary framework that focuses on salient issues of interest across disciplines should be considered. Transdisciplinarity aims for the creation of an inclusive research environment that transcends traditional disciplinary approaches to complex problems. This article initiates an exploration of disciplinary differences and proposes commitment to transdisciplinarity as a guiding principle that may increase the viability of MBE as a mediating field between neuroscience and education.     

Can Mathematics Education and History of Mathematics Coexist?

Despite the wide interest in combining mathematics education and the history of mathematics, there are grave and fundamental problems in this effort. The main difficulty is that while one wants to see historical topics in the classroom or an historical approach in teaching, the commitment to teach the modern mathematics and modern mathematical techniques necessary in thepure and applied sciences forces one either to trivialize history or to distortit. In particular, this commitment forces one to adopt a Whiggish approach to the history of mathematics. Two possible resolutions of the difficulty are (1) radical separation – putting the history of mathematics on a separate track from the ordinary course of instruction, and (2) radical accommodation – turning the study of mathematics into the study of mathematical texts.     

Race,Education, and Joblessness in the Inner City, 1970–1990

In When Work Disappears, William Julius Wilson argues that the difficulties black inner-city residents face in finding work has more to do with their failure to acquire the kinds of education, skills, and work habits required by changes in the urban labor market than with racial discrimination. In this essay, I argue that this notion tends both to obscure the substantial gains African-Americans have made in education and to discount the degree to which race continues to mediate the relationship between educational achievement and labor market outcomes. Although there is no question that the economic position of those with little education has deteriorated badly over the last two decades, absent policies that address the persistent racial disparities in employment, reforming education by itself will not substantially improve African-American employment opportunities or reduce black joblessness in the inner city.     

Can the Study of Students' Epistemological Beliefs and Epistemic Match Help Us to Explore the Disciplinary Nature of Education Studies?

In the United Kingdom, education studies degree courses offer students with a range of career plans both inside and outside the formal education system, a chance to study the foundations of education. The disciplinary nature of education studies has been debated from a variety of theoretical perspectives. This article explores the usefulness of the concept of personal epistemological beliefs in exploring the issue of disciplinarity in education studies and contributing to that debate. An empirical study utilizing measures of personal epistemological beliefs and epistemic match sought to establish whether students on an education studies degree course in the United Kingdom took an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach to applying the disciplines of education studies to their assignments. The results show students apparently alternating between these two approaches and thus highlighting some of the potential of personal epistemological beliefs in exploring the nature of education studies and other similar courses.     

Cultural capital as whiteness? Examining logics of ethno-racial representation and resistance

There is a significant, longstanding tradition in British sociological research that renders cultural capital synonymous with whiteness. This article suggests that one substantive factor that contributes to the enduring relationship between whiteness and cultural capital is the paucity of research on the Black and ethnic minority middle classes. Studies of social class in the United Kingdom frequently render middle-class life synonymous with whiteness and all too often fix ethno-racial identities to the working classes. The article draws on a 14-month comparative ethnography as a case study to provide an asset-based reading of cultural capital among the Black Caribbean middle classes in Britain. The findings suggest that the seemingly exclusive link between whiteness and cultural capital is problematised by Black Caribbean young people, and therefore should be further critiqued in sociological and educational research, especially when developing cultural capital analyses.     

How Exactly Does Place Matter in Crime Analysis? Place,Space, and Spatial Heterogeneity

This article has four aims. First is to clarify the origins and different meanings of place, space, and other basic concepts in spatial analysis. The second aim is to reiterate the illogicality of the spatial homogeneity assumption in ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. An illustration of the comparison between traditional OLS and geographically weighted regression modeling is included for this purpose. The third aim is to explain that place matters in crime analysis not only when crime data are spatially clustered, but when relationships between correlates are found to be conditional upon place. The final aim is to convince criminology and criminal justice faculty to begin discussing the inclusion of spatial modeling as a compulsory topic in the curriculum.     

What Can Clients Tell Us about Seeking Counselling and Their Experience of It?

Research on counselling is often unknown to or ignored by counsellors. Research that explores counselling from the client’s perspective is even less familiar to most counsellors, perhaps because there is far less of it compared to the quantity of research investigating the process from the counsellor’s point of view. Nevertheless, research presenting the client’s perspective can be a useful guide to both counsellors and their clients. With this aim in mind, this article summarises some of the research that has been conducted from the client’s point of view and suggests implications for counselling practice.     

What is Education For? On Good Education,Teacher Judgement,and Educational Professionalism

Teaching and teachers have recently become the centre of attention of policy makers and researchers. The general idea here is that teaching matters. Yet the question that is either not asked or is only answered implicitly is why teaching matters. In this article I engage with this question in the context of a wider discussion about the role, status and significance of the question of purpose in education. I suggest that this is the most fundamental question in all educational endeavours. It is a normative question which poses itself as a multi-dimensional question, since education always functions in relation to three domains of purpose: qualification, socialisation and subjectification. Against this background I analyse the specific nature of teacher judgement in education and show how the space for teacher judgement is being threatened by recent developments in educational policy and practice that concern the status of the student, the impact of accountability and the role of evidence. I indicate how, where and why these are problematic and what this implies for regaining a space for teachers’ professional judgement.     

Interaction Between Research and Education: Can industry cooperation improve the link?

This study attempts to provide a new perspective on current shifts in knowledge production through analysing the relationship between research and education. The study, based on interviews and questionnaires, focuses on the interaction within applied research centres with a close industry cooperation. The results suggest that the interaction between research and education benefits from a collaborative environment, since researchers hold positive attitudes towards integrating research, education and collaboration, and students are given the opportunity to work within applied research projects. The findings are discussed in terms of researchers’ ability to handle their scholarly tasks of research, teaching, and collaboration, and the importance for acknowledging research collaborations from both research and teaching perspectives.

     

Where Do All the STEM Graduates Go? Higher Education,the Labour Market and Career Trajectories in the UK

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Problems with the supply of highly skilled science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workers have been reported by employers and...     

A Race to the Top From the Bottom of the Well? The Paradox of Race and U.S. Education Reform

Abstract

This article explores the paradox of “race” and U.S. education reform in the 21st century. I consider how the invisible ontology of race and its entangled relationship with class divert our attention from economic inequality and undermine policies intended to redress racial inequality in schools. I conclude that the education research community must unpack its use of “race” and focus on the role of racism in the maintenance of racial caste in America's schools.     

Security,Extremism and Education: Safeguarding or Surveillance?

This article analyses how education is positioned in the current concerns about security and extremism. This means firstly examining the different meanings of security (national, human and societal) and who provides security for whom. Initially, a central dilemma is acknowledged: that schooling appears to be simultaneously irrelevant to the huge global questions of security and yet central to the learning of alternative ways to conduct human relations. With regard to extremism, two aspects of importance in ideological compliance or challenge are firstly the attempted securitisation of education, and secondly the role of education in young people joining or supporting extremist movements. The UK’s ‘Prevent’ strategy is examined here. The issue of how to safeguard young people without securitising institutions suggests four key features: inclusivity, encounters with difference, networking and active citizenship. Critiquing sacred texts and the use of humour and satire also act to foster resilience. Educational approaches within transitional justice underline the importance of tackling violence in schools and promoting a human rights culture that promotes both human security and ultimately national security.     

Can the Distance Education Student Progress (DESP) Inventory be Used as a Tool to Predict Attrition in Distance Education?

This study examined the extent to which the sub‐scales and scales developed from the distance education student progress (DESP) Inventory are associated with attrition and persistence of external students enrolled in the fourth year of the Bachelor of Education course at an Australian university. A discriminant analysis of the 15 factors produced from a principal analysis of the DESP Inventory correctly classified 73% of withdrawing and continuing students. The first four factors correctly predicted 64% of withdrawing and continuing students. There is some congruence between the sub‐scales and scales of the DESP Inventory and those reported in this study.