Latinas Pathways to STEM: Exploring Contextual Mitigating Factors

Latinas Pathways to STEM: Exploring Contextual Mitigating Factors presents transnational case studies of Latinas and Mexicanas pursuing a STEM degree/career from the United States (Georgia, New York, Texas) and México. The authors underscore that the experiences of the participants highlighted in this book provide insights into how to support successful Latinas and Mexicanas in STEM career pipelines and pathways. In doing so, the authors address the need for a set of approaches to STEM education policy that acknowledges that institutionalized pipelines often create replication by funding intervention programs that attempt to sterilize context by identifying variables and ignoring the associated contextual mitigating factors (CMFs). Researchers and funders of STEM intervention efforts can learn from the analysis of these case studies that successful Latinas and Mexicanas developed tactical understanding, which reinforced their identity and resisted how they were positioned by negative CMFs, reaffirming their aspirations and successes in STEM. Education graduate students, research methodologists, policy makers, and practitioners will find CMF analysis a useful methodological tool to interrogate how sociocultural factors position designated underrepresented people in STEM pipelines and pathways. Education policies that advocate for the existence and maintenance of pipelines that increase underrepresented Latinas and Mexicanas in STEM are important but are often crafted with blind spots that leave out how context mitigates policy especially at the individual level.

Alejandro J. Gallard Martínez (PhD, Michigan State University) is Professor and Goizueta Distinguished Chair, Georgia Southern University.

Wesley B. Pitts (PhD, CUNY Graduate Center) is Professor of Science Education and currently serves as Chair of the Department of Middle and High School Education at Lehman College, Bronx, New York.

Belinda Flores Bustos (PhD, The University of Texas, Austin) is Professor of Bilingual Education and currently serves as Associate Dean of Professional Preparation and Partnerships as well as the Director for the Academy of Teacher Excellence Research Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

S. Lizette Ramos de Robles (PhD, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) is a professor and researcher in the Environmental Sciences Department at the University of Guadalajara, México. She currently serves as Coordinator of Environmental Health Sciences Master’s program at the University of Guadalajara.

Lorena Claeys (PhD, The University of Texas at San Antonio) is the Director of Clinical Professional Experiences, Co-Director and Research Associate for the Academy of Teacher Excellence Research Center in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas at San Antonio.