This article is authored by Corinna Regan and Danny Rahal
Have you ever experienced sitting in a math class, thinking you were not doing as well as your peers? Maybe you discussed the last test with someone in your class and they felt it was easy while you felt that you were struggling. Maybe you thought you should have spent more time studying or put in more effort to understand the material the professor was teaching. Or maybe you got your final back and it wasn’t the grade you wanted. It turns out, you might be feeling as though you are struggling but you are doing about the same as your peers.
Understandably, if you feel as though you are struggling in a class, it is unlikely that you will opt to take more of the same classes. That is to say, if you think you’re struggling in a math class, you’re not likely to become a math major; which is unfortunate because math provides some important critical thinking skills, not to mention that sometimes math is required for specific degrees. You might know someone who thinks they are struggling in math and decided to change degrees because they didn’t want to continue taking math classes. This is why studying students who find themselves feeling as though they are struggling in math is important, math teaches skills and not taking math classes can change someone’s career or degree path (Zvoch & Stevens, 2005).
The fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) have predominantly been thought of as studies for white men due to the lack of diversity and inclusion of racially and gender-minoritized individuals in these fields. Several efforts have aimed to diversify fields because of compelling evidence for the benefits and clear necessity of a diverse workforce in these fields. Historically, most research has been conducted by very specific people, especially white men. In psychology, we call these WEIRD samples (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). Most of this research is then relevant to a specific subset of people because the people conducting the studies and the people participating in them were part of that small group and we are learning that group doesn’t represent everyone the way they thought. Learning that specific sample doesn’t represent everyone is why STEM fields benefit from a diverse community. Everyone benefits from STEM work, and research and information from other communities serve to benefit STEM as a whole because the wide breadth of ideas, concepts, and knowledge that can be brought to the field will be relevant to a larger audience. One example of why it is important to increase diversity and a sense of inclusion is that research, part of STEM, is shown to be a deciding factor in the justice system (Malcom & Malcom-Piqueux, 2013). The justice system dictates much of people’s day-to-day lives, and having representation in the decisions made is critical to those most affected by it. Therefore access to STEM is necessary for all individuals because of the effects on their day-to-day lives and much more. Increasing job opportunities and reducing barriers to knowledge can reduce the sense of exclusion or feeling unwelcome in these fields, which can promote diversity and further strengthen the advancement of the STEM fields.
In addition to differences by race and gender, another excluding factor is one’s socioeconomic status. Continuing one’s education can be beneficial in many ways, including having more job opportunities and consequently greater income potential (McNamee & Ganss, 2023). Seeing the utility of academics for promoting one’s future and believing in social mobility–or the idea that one can achieve a higher socioeconomic status–can motivate individuals to continue with their education, which is often called academic persistence (Asher et al., 2023; Browman et al., 2017). Therefore it is important to foster the academic persistence of students from disadvantaged backgrounds to provide them with more opportunities.
Students are exposed to stereotypes that can change how they view themselves and others. One snap judgment that is commonly heard and believed is ‘Women don’t like math.’ Therefore, an individual identifying as a woman and perceiving themselves as lower in social status may believe that they do not have a ‘math brain’ when in fact they are performing just as well as their peers. The fact that performance was not significantly affected shows that biases play a role in perceived standing and perceptions of academic performance (Arias et al., 2023). In other words, a woman who hears that women generally do not have a ‘math brain’ might not do as well on an exam or expect to do as well simply because of what they have been told.
All of these factors contribute to how one thinks about themselves in the dynamic social structures around them. How individuals view themselves is affected by their access to resources, education, jobs, and their personal experiences as compared to those around them affect how they view themselves. We all naturally compare ourselves with the people around us (Who is the most productive? Who has the most say in decisions?), and this perception of where we stand relative to other people is called subjective social status.
One recent study conducted by the Health Equity in Youth lab examined differences in college students’ perceived standing in a college-level statistics class. Professors aspire for students to feel welcome and equal within the classroom, but students naturally recognize whether they are doing well in a class and whether they are performing among the top students. As we would expect, students who received better scores on their final exam tended to report having higher standing in the class. How did we assess standing? Students viewed a ladder, which noted that the top rung represented the students with the highest standing in the class and the bottom rung represented the students with the lowest standing. We followed up these ratings by asking participants to explain what factors they considered when evaluating their standing in the class. Students explained that they considered their achievements and grades in the class, feelings of mastery of the material, as well as the amount of effort and study time they invested compared to those in the class and those they knew taking a similar class.
However, factors beyond academic performance also impacted scores. On average the women and the working students were performing just as well as the men and students without part-time jobs in the class. Even though they performed just as well in the class, women reported having lower standing in the class than men, and students with partial and full-time employment reported having lower standing in the class than their peers who were not working students. These results suggest that, despite performing just as well as their peers, they differed in how they felt about their performance and how they viewed themselves as ranking within the class.
What do we do about this? Subjective Social Status is not the same as self-esteem, and it is not a mindset that we can shift on or off. Students are coming into the classroom with varied social identities and exposed to varied messages regarding their belonging. These experiences must be validated so that we can adjust the classroom in ways to be more accommodating of students’ backgrounds. We must acknowledge that these societal messages are carrying over to affect students’ engagement with classes and perceived standing relative to their peers in higher education. Further work is needed to determine the consequences of such messages; perceiving oneself as having lower social status within a class can impact students’ chosen career path and whether they continue education, and may also worsen their performance over time.
References
- Arias, O., Canals, C., Mizala, A., & Meneses, F. (2023). Gender gaps in Mathematics and Language: The bias of competitive achievement tests. PLoS ONE, 18(3), e0283384. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283384
- Browman, A. S., Destin, M., Carswell, K. L., & Svoboda, R. C. (2017). Perceptions of socioeconomic mobility influence academic persistence among low socioeconomic status students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 45–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.03.006
- Malcom, S. M., & Malcom-Piqueux, L. E. (2013). Critical mass revisited. Educational Researcher, 42(3), 176–178. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189×13486763
- McNamee, T. C., & Ganss, K. M. (2023). Rural students in higher education: From college preparation and enrollment to experiences and persistence. Peabody Journal of Education, 98(4), 380–395. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956x.2023.2238508
- Zvoch, K., & Stevens, J. J. (2005). Sample exclusion and student attrition effects in the longitudinal study of middle school mathematics performance. Educational Assessment, 10(2), 105–123. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326977ea1002_2