Succeeding as Engineering Majors: Cultural Ecology Theory and Perceptions of Within-Race Gender and Ethnicity Differences in Engineering Skills and Work Ethnic

摘要

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been successful in educating African American students - an achievement partially attributed to the high expectancy and supportive environment that HBCUs have been found to foster. In fact, beliefs about performance that place African American students, particularly male students, at a deficit exist at predominately White colleges and universities (PWIs). Subsequently, while a number of studies have sought to understand key issues in African American students' matriculation by focusing on African Americans at PWIs, to a great extent, education and psychological research excludes the experiences of African American male students persisting at HBCUs. Although the significant and positive impact of attending HBCUs is well established, this paper argues that racially homogenous education settings such as HBCUs are not devoid of deficit intellectual stereotyping of African American male students. Further, the nature and function of within-race and gender based ideas about students' work ethic and skills may operate uniquely in racially homogeneous settings. Therefore, the purposes of the paper are to 1) elucidate the presence of within-race stereotypes of Black engineering students (African American and international Black males and females) at an HBCU and 2) explore how African American and international Black males' internalization of these beliefs inform their social and personal identity as engineering students.