– The students constructed personal narratives mediated by symbolic cultural systems to make meaning of their experiences, which more often disputed than confirmed the model minority stereotype.
– Eleven students brought up the notion that some Asian students are encouraged to pursue STEM-based fields because the perception is that they will not be successful in other fields, such as English, religion, or history. They discussed being pigeonholed into majoring in STEM in spite of their many diverse life and career interests.
– The experiences of Black and Asian STEM college students overlap significantly, in that both are bound by society’s misrecognition of their race and ability.
– These students were not immune from believing in the stereotypes and biases about their own race, even as they recognized that these stereotypes might be harming them.
– Five students in this study discussed using the MMM and their high achievement in STEM to capitalize on or take advantage of the stereotype.
– South Asian (Indian or Pakistani) students in particular have similar experiences that differ from those of East Asian students. Many women in this sample talked about the salience of skin tone discrimination in their lives and its effects on their academic performance.
2017 - The Burden of Being “Model”: Racialized Experiences of Asian STEM College Students
This study was guided by epistemological and methodological assumptions and beliefs, which influence how the data were interpreted, analyzed, and reported and were based on a 5-step phenomenological research design.
Over the course of the academic years from 2010 to 2012, the first and third authors interviewed 23 high-achieving Asian STEM students (advanced sophomores, juniors, and seniors) from four universities. Students established their academic criteria for participation with unofficial transcripts that verified the following:
(a) participants’ advanced sophomore, junior, or senior status; (b) indication of enrollment in a STEM major; and (c) at least a 3.0 grade point average (on a 4.0 scale) in STEM courses.
The authors employed phenomenological research methodology to identify firsthand perspectives on the ways in which these high-achieving Asian students made sense of their stereotyped experiences.