A recent study by Amanda Diekman’s group in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, supported by 3M, found that structured reflection supports minoritized students’ wellbeing.
Indiana University professor Amanda Diekman and her team are moving beyond the laboratory to transform research into action through an industry partnership.
In a January publication in Scientific Reports, Diekman, a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences within the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington, found that guided written reflection improved students’ attitudes and feelings of belonging in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Now, her team works with faculty at IU and other universities to implement this style of reflection in the classroom.
For Diekman, the study was a chance to challenge the social perception of STEM. People tend to think of STEM as a platform for individual success, she explained: an opportunity to build knowledge, competency, and mastery. “But compared to other fields, like law, or medicine, or business, STEM is consensually perceived as lacking in communal opportunities,” she said. These communal opportunities are especially valued by women and minoritized racial groups. So, Diekman wondered, could bringing forward the social and community impacts of STEM benefit these minoritized groups?
“That was our basic psychological question for a long time; we did a lot of work on that,” said Diekman, “and then I got an email out of the blue one day.” The message came from Jayshree Seth: the Chief Science Advocate at 3M, the company behind Scotch™ tape, N95 respirators, and many other products. Diekman’s work had resonated with Seth, and she wanted to support further research and outreach given her own experiences and 3M’s commitment to STEM education and to diversity in STEM fields to drive innovation.
With funding from 3M, the team recruited 466 STEM undergraduate students, half of whom identified as Black, Latinx, and/or Native American (classified by the National Science Foundation as minoritized groups in STEM). Half of the students were randomly assigned to reflect on the challenges in their STEM major while the other half considered those challenges integrated with their inspiration for pursuing STEM. Each experimental group wrote for five minutes to respond to their assigned prompt, then ranked their feelings of belonging, enjoyment, and stress within their major.
The researchers found that students who reflected on their inspiration reported greater enjoyment in pursuing STEM, higher feelings of belonging within the field, and a greater capacity to handle stress than those who reflected only on their challenges. This trend was consistent across students with different racial and gender identities.
“What we showed was a very robust effect,” said Diekman. “It's not simply that students who tend to think about purpose also tend to do well,” she explained, but also that students can be guided towards cognitive benefits through reflection.
However, the authors highlighted, “The ‘same’ STEM classroom is not psychologically equivalent to all students.” Minoritized students reported overall higher levels of stress and lower levels of coping resources compared to their majoritized colleagues. Even purpose reflection didn’t remedy this gap; minoritized women who reflected on their inspiration for pursuing STEM still reported higher levels of stress than majoritized men who reflected on their challenges.
While individual reflection can’t wholly address such a systemic inequity, explained Diekman, it’s a good place to start. The norms, practices, and policies of institutions shape broad ideas about what STEM is and who belongs in it. “And a classroom can be an institution, right?” she reflected. “So, how can we better prepare instructors to understand and recognize [the importance of identity reflection], and let students have space to explore those identities?”
The next phase of the partnership with 3M and Diekman’s team includes working with STEM faculty and staff at IU and other institutions, both in one-on-one and in group formats, to help them implement purpose and identity-based reflection in their classes.
Logan Paul, a faculty member in the Luddy School, met with Diekman’s team multiple times via Zoom. “The conversations with Amanda’s team helped me better equip myself to foster belonging in my classroom and by extension in STEM,” he said. Paul worked with the team to revise and realign a reflective assignment and in-class activity that asks students to consider the motivations that brought them to his course and how they plan to implement the knowledge they’ll learn throughout the semester.
Paul’s experience reflects that of many faculty who have partnered with Diekman’s team. Class by class, these collaborations turn theory into practice, helping students feel more at home in their STEM major.
Diekman’s team welcomes new partnerships with STEM instructors at IU and other institutions. The team also offers a growing repository of reflection exercises, named PRISM – Purpose Reflection Integration in STEM Modalities. Instructors can view and adopt these exercises for their own classes at http://go.iu.edu/prism.
