“They are here to support me”: Community cultural wealth assets and precollege experiences of undergraduate Black men in engineering

Abstract

Background: Families and community networks serve as sources of cultural capital and provide resources that aid the development of Black male engineers. Community cultural wealth (CCW) has been leveraged by engineering education scholars to understand and highlight student and community assets available in communities of color. Little is known about the diverse ways that Black families support engineering education pathways.Purpose: This study characterized the diverse forms of support that Black families and extended family members provided to undergraduate Black men along their precollege engineering pathways. Method: Thirteen Black undergraduate men majoring in engineering participated in focus groups at two predominantly White institutions in different regions of the United States. Findings: The findings suggest that Black parents are engaged in the engineering learning and development of Black males, which opposes the deficit framing of Black parental engagement. The data revealed how the forms of capital overlap. A compelling finding is that capital has a bidirectional nature-meaning that participants described instances of receiving and providing capital.Conclusions: CCW framework provided a lens to explore how Black men were supported by their family networks and how they used capital to maneuver noninclusive engineering environments. The findings substantiate the role of Black parental engagement on engineering education pathways. This work promotes these parental engagement practices as worthy of inclusion in the canons of effective evidence-based parental engagement strategies that encourage engineering learning and participation.

A Narrative of the Community Cultural Wealth of a Black Male Engineering Undergraduate Student

“…Consistent with previous research, we saw that aspirational capital was essential to Barry's success (Brooms & Davis, 2017;Martin et al, 2013;Tolbert Smith, 2022). We expand current research by not only pointing out the sources of capital (i.e., familial capital) and what Barry's hopes and dreams were, but we also illustrate the internal motivation behind his aspirations.…”

“…These studies showed that Black men use their aspirational, navigational, social, familial, resistant, and linguistic capital to succeed in engineering. For example, Black men in engineering are driven by their aspirational capital (Tolbert Smith, 2022), interest in engineering and other STEM disciplines (Collins & Jones Roberson, 2020;Flowers & Banda, 2018;Samuelson & Litzler, 2016;Mobley & Brawner, 2019;Moore et al, 2003;Tolbert Smith, 2022), and self-motivation (Burt et al, 2020) to succeed in engineering.…”

“I know what I need to learn”: The intersection of aspirational and navigational capitals for marginalized‐identity STEM students

“…In the precollege pathway, for Black men who were engineering majors, navigational capital overlapped with familial capital through messaging and priorities that families set for their students. Such messaging, including “be selfish” and “be the best” (Tolbert Smith, 2022, p. 757), resonates with the Individualization (action‐based) and Intrinsic Motivators (mindset‐based) findings in the present study. Elsewhere, external sources such as knowledgeable faculty also supported Black STEM majors and they represented strategies, or navigational capital, that supported their learning (Ortiz et al, 2019).…”

“…In studies that specifically explored the experiences of Black male engineering students, familial capital overlapped with aspirational capital in the form of emotional support for this category (Tolbert Smith, 2022) and through parental encouragement throughout their education for graduate students (Burt & Johnson, 2018). Teachers were also supportive of Black male engineers' aspirations in STEM (Burt & Johnson, 2018).…”

“…Additionally, Latinx students in STEM has been a common combination of identity group and field of study for analysis (Monarrez et al, 2019; Morales‐Chicas et al, 2022; Peralta et al, 2013). Where a group is studied alongside STEM, engaging the CCW framework, other areas of focus include pathways through STEM (Rincón et al, 2020), graduate school (Jaumot‐Pascual et al, 2021; Pumaccahua & Rogers, 2022), engineering (Sellers et al, 2022; Tolbert Smith, 2022), and identity development (Ortiz et al, 2019). These framings—single components of CCW, all components of CCW, and a demographic identity group alongside CCW—have shaped broad understandings of CCW's role in postsecondary experiences for MI STEM students.…”