Society's educational debts in biology, chemistry, and physics across race, gender, and class

TL;DR

This study analyzes how societal inequities create educational debts for underrepresented groups in STEM and finds that collaborative instruction alone does not sufficiently address these disparities across biology, chemistry, and physics.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the persistence of educational debts for marginalized groups and evaluates the effectiveness of collaborative instruction in mitigating these debts.

Findings

Black and Hispanic women and first-generation Black men owe the largest educational debts.

Collaborative instruction does not significantly reduce societal educational debts.

Debts vary across disciplines and are not fully repaid by current instructional methods.

Abstract

The success of collaborative instruction in helping students achieve higher grades in introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses has led many educators and researchers to assume these methods also address inequities. However, little evidence tests this assumption. Structural inequities in our society have led to the chronic underrepresentation of Black, Hispanic, women, and first-generation students in STEM disciplines. Broadening participation from underrepresented groups in biology, chemistry, and physics would reduce social inequalities while harnessing diversity's economic impact on innovation and workforce expansion. We leveraged data on content knowledge from 18,791 students in 305 introductory courses using collaborative instruction at 45 institutions. We modeled student outcomes across the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and first-generation college status within and across science disciplines. Using these models, we examine the educational debts society owes college science students prior to instruction and whether instruction mitigates, perpetuates, or exacerbates those debts. The size of these educational debts and the extent to which courses added to or repaid these debts varied across disciplines. Across all three disciplines, society owed Black and Hispanic women and first-generation Black men the largest educational debts. Collaborative instructional strategies were not sufficient to repay society's educational debts.