2011 - Influences of Faculty Validation on Community College STEM Students’ Persistence and Success

Attribution: Hester, Dana
Researchers: Dana Hester
University Affiliation: California State University, Fullerton; Citrus College
Email: dhester@citruscollege.edu
Research Question:
1) What is the relationship between demographic variables and validation scores for community college STEM students? 2) What is the relationship between demographic variables and academic success and persistence for community college STEM students? 3) What is the influence of validation scores on academic success and persistence based on continued enrollment for community college STEM students?
Published: No
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: N/A
Journal Entry: Dissertation
Year: 2011
Findings:
  1. The only significant relationship related to validation scores was the faculties gender. Students who were enrolled in courses taught by females tended to report higher perceptions of faculty validation.
  2. Students of color tended to have higher grades than did White students.
  3. Students enrolled in courses taught by White faculty tended to earn higher grades.
  4. Students that had reported higher perceptions of validation earned significantly higher grades.
  5. No significant relationship was found between validation score and persistence.
  6. The relationships between student ethnicity and perception of faculty validation, student gender and perception of faculty validation, and faculty ethnicity and perception of faculty validation were not shown to be significant.
  7. Academic success is indirectly influenced by faculty gender as mediated by student perception of faculty. In other words, students tend to earn higher grades enrolled in courses taught by female instructors as a result of having higher perceptions of faculty validation.
  8. Persistence was not shown to have any significant relationships.
  9. Faculty gender was shown to directly influence student perceptions of validation, and student and faculty ethnicity showed direct effects on academic success.
  10. Student perceptions of validation were shown to be a strong predictor of academic success.
Scholarship Types: DissertationKeywords: Academic SuccessCommunity College StudentsFacultyPersistenceSTEMValidationRegions: WestMethodologies: MixedResearch Designs: SurveyAnalysis Methods: Descriptive StatisticsMultivariate Path analyses Sampling Frame:Community College Students at a HSI
Sampling Types: Non-Random - PurposiveAnalysis Units: StudentTeacherData Types: Mixed-Cross Sectional
Data Description:
  • The data was collected from students who attended a single-campus community college district in southern California. The college was classified as an HSI with an approximate Hispanic student population of 43%. The White students made up 29% of the university, Black students made up 6%, and Asian students made up 1%.
  • The methodology utilized for this study was an online self-reported Likert-scale survey to determine the independent variables which were students’ perceptions of faculty validation as well as to collect the demographic variable information. The demographic variables were the gender of student, ethnicity of students, gender of faculty, ethnicity of faculty, and student SES.
  • DV: were persistence and academic success. Academic success was measured by a grade in the particular course. Persistence was measured by re-enrollment the subsequent semester.
  • The population sampled in this study included students enrolled in second-year level courses in STEM fields. The total number of student participants from both summer and fall 2010 was 164.
  • The qualitative portion of this study was done by responses to open-ended questions which were sorted according to the five major themes of the survey instrument and then further sorted into sub-themes according to topic. The transformation of the qualitative data (student anecdotes about experiences with or without validation) involves analysis for codes and themes.
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:Community College Pipeline into STEM.
Archives: K-16 STEM Abstracts