helps

24May

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EDUCATION

Scientists Can Look Like Them – What Sending Science Majors Into Elementary Schools Helps Latino And Black Students Realize

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. A student’s drawings of a scientist upon starting and after completing the Young Scientists Program. USC Young Scientists Program, CC BY-NC-ND The big idea After taking part in hands-on STEM lab experiments as part of a youth science program I coordinate, Latino and Black students were more likely to picture scientists as people who look like them – and not stereotypical white men in lab coats. The Young Scientists Program at the Joint Educational Project of the University of Southern California offers specialized science, technology, engineering and math instruction in local elementary schools that have mostly Latino and Black students – two groups long underrepresented in STEM fields. My colleagues and I recruit underg...

Angry Americans: How political rage helps campaigns but hurts democracy

As the 2020 presidential election draws near, one thing is clear: America is an angry nation. From protests over persistent racial injustice to white nationalist-linked counterprotests, anger is on display across the country. The national ire relates to inequality, the government’s coronavirus response, economic concerns, race and policing. It’s also due, in large part, to deliberate and strategic choices made by American politicians to stoke voter anger for their own electoral advantage. Donald Trump’s attempts to enrage his base are so plentiful that progressive magazine The Nation called him a “merchant of anger.” Meanwhile, his opponent, Joe Biden, elicits anger toward the president, calling Trump a “toxic presence” who has “cloaked America in darkness.” Anger-filled political rheto...

Ethnic diversity on campus helps break down stereotypes

When students attend ethnically diverse colleges, their enriched experience transforms how they view different ethnic groups and better prepares them for life and work in 21st century America. This finding is based on the responses of nearly 4,000 students from 28 U.S. colleges who completed annual surveys between 1999 and 2004 about their views of overall ethnic diversity at their schools, specific ethnic groups and their own well-being. More diversity makes students see ethnic groups as being basically the same when it comes to warmth and competence – two major dimensions of group stereotypes. That is, the more diverse a campus is, the more likely students perceive Asians, Latinos, Blacks and whites as similarly trustworthy and similarly intelligent, rather than as stereotypically diff...