Race, Inclusion, and Science: Things That Really Do Go Together

摘要

Increasing diversity has emerged as an important goal for improving the productivity, innovation, and culture of science. Many current strategies play a numbers game: they try to increase the number of underrepresented students, both women and minorities, exposed to science, or increase the number recruited. Yet, exposure and recruitment do not solve broader issues of inclusion, nor do they address structural inequalities and biases that inhibit retention. There is a growing body of literature that highlights the crucial role that engagement with science plays in helping underrepresented students "see" themselves as scientists. We aimed to extend the work in this area and suggest that thinking about broader historical and social contexts of engineering, as well as the role of engineering to improve society, may be especially relevant for girls' engagement with engineering. The social sciences contain many tools to encourage students to develop problem-solving skillsets that help them understand the positive force context dependence and awareness of biases can play in the scientific enterprise. Social science methodologies contradict the notion of engineering as purely objective, which can be less alienating for individuals with identities that have been traditionally marginalized.