The Role of Family and Friends to Broaden and Diversify Participation in Educational Research

Abstract

This study examined critical factors in a mentoring system within a federally-funded Pathways to the Education Sciences Research Training Program to prepare undergraduates at a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) for graduate studies in educational research. Our conceptual framework integrates an inclusive model of family engagement consistent with the literature recommendations for diverse families of college students. We considered the following question: what is the role of family and friends within an orchestrated network of mentors who provide support to undergraduate fellows from minoritized groups in their pathways toward graduate studies in educational sciences? We analyzed quantitative and qualitative responses from an end-of-program survey administered to one cohort of this program. Within their mentoring network, fellows reported that family and friends provided important support in socio-emotional, cognitive, and identity development, but not as strong as that provided by distributed faculty and academic mentors. This study furthers our understanding of the role of family and friends within an orchestrated network of mentors within our Pathways Training Program. However, we still need to extend our knowledge of how research training programs at HSIs can be more intentional in emphasizing the important contributions family and friends provide to promote the success of diverse students in their pathways toward graduate studies.

1. Introduction

Over the past 20 years, student populations in U.S. schools have become more diverse. The social and political context of education has also seen important transformations that impact the current challenges to provide inclusive high-quality learning experiences for diverse groups of students to also be successful from K-12 and into higher education, including graduate degrees. Therefore, addressing the existing inequities in the educational system is one of the paramount challenges faced by education researchers and practitioners in the nation.

Recent U.S. demographics reported in the census state that in 2020, the U.S. Latinx population reached 62.1 million, accounting for 19% of all Americans and making it the nation’s second largest ethnic group [1]. However, this group often falls behind in other progress indicators. For example, regarding socio-economic status, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center [2], 52% of Latinx reported having a lower income, 35% having a middle income and only 8% with an upper income. Regarding educational attainment, 55% of Latinx reported having completed high school or less, whereas 11% reported having completed college and only 6% reported having completed postgraduate studies. The most recent data on doctoral degree completion show that Latinx only earned 8.5% of all doctoral degrees conferred in the 2020–2021 academic year. In fields like education that tend to award doctorates to more diverse populations, in that same year, Latinx only earned 8.6% of all doctoral degrees [3].

Many factors contribute to the small number of Latinx and other racially minoritized students completing doctoral degrees, such as a lack of role models [4], mentoring [5], unfamiliar expectations of graduate education [6], and finances [7], to mention a few. Equity in education issues require immediate attention in education research to consider the existing disparities in income, resources, and access to quality education across lines of race and ethnicity, class, gender, language minority status, and disability status [8]. For education to become the “great equalizer” for our diverse U.S. society, inequities in education emerge as an imminent factor that needs to be addressed in ways that are systematic, supported by policy, and that involve all stakeholders [8,9].

In order to address the adverse effects of socioeconomic status and discrimination, we need to broaden participation in education research by providing more inclusive models to prepare students to be successful in higher education, including graduate studies. One way to do this is by offering programs such as the Research Training Programs in Education Sciences, funded by the U.S. Department of Education through the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Center for Education Research (NCER) [8]. By diversifying the composition of scholars devoted to education research, the field will be enriched with novel ideas and methods that can better understand and address the current inequalities in the educational system. However, these models for student success toward doctoral studies have to be supported in theoretical frameworks that purposefully value and make use of the resources and social capital [10] that these underrepresented groups bring to the field of education sciences.

Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) serve as important settings for preparing Latinx students for graduate school. While HSIs only represent 19% of all higher-education institutions in the U.S., they enroll 62% of all Latinx undergraduate students [11]. Additionally, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [12] reports that high Hispanic enrollment (HHE) institutions play a significant role in preparing Latinx students for graduate education. For example, 37% of Latinx who received a bachelor’s degree in science and engineering disciplines between 2013 and 2017 had received a bachelor’s degree from a HHE institution. In that same time frame, at least 40% of all Latinx doctoral recipients in agricultural sciences, physical sciences, and biological sciences had received a bachelor’s degree from a HSI [12].

Research topics that lead to broadening participation and student success have also been impacted by recent demographic, social, and political shifts. To create strategies for overcoming barriers related to student success in college and graduate studies for students from underrepresented backgrounds, and especially those at HSIs, we need to acknowledge and better understand the involvement of students’ family and friends [13,14]. Unfortunately, a good number of studies support a specific view of parenting for college students as desirable, emphasizing their role solely as a source of tuition, and promoting that students become more separated and individuated from their parents (Self, 2013 in [13]). This individualized view is incompatible with cultural practices from many families of color, including those attending HSIs, who have more collectivist practices. Although Latinx families have often been seen from a deficit perspective for their collectivist practices, for these groups, families and friends are critical in providing emotional and financial support. For example, Latinx families tend to maintain close relationships with their children as they navigate through higher education and their whole lifespan. Some studies show that Latinx values, like familismo, comunidad, and personalismo, contribute positively to student experiences [15]. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the field by better understanding the role of family and friends within an orchestrated network of mentors who provide support to undergraduate fellows from minoritized groups at a HSI undergraduate research training program in their pathways toward graduate studies in educational research.

The HSI undergraduate research training program in our study is supported by a federal grant to prepare a new generation of scholars in education research to broaden participation and provide innovative approaches to research that address inequities in education. For these research training programs to increase the participation of underserved populations, we need to develop models for research training programs and best practices that are inclusive of the specific cultures and needs of students, such as those from HSIs.

In the next section, we describe our conceptual framework, which integrates an inclusive model of family engagement for diverse families of college students at a HSI, within a theory for understanding the academic and socialization experiences of working-class racial minority students and the role of a network of mentors in empowering students as active scholars.

2. Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework of this study is centered in an assets-based approach model for an undergraduate research training program for students’ preparation as scholars who contribute to research in education sciences as they pursue graduate studies, in the context of a Hispanic-serving institution [16]. Our framework is theoretically supported by three pillars: (1) the academic and socialization experiences of working-class racial minority students [17,18], (2) the role of mentors in empowering fellows as active researchers “changing the world” [19,20], and (3) the role of family and friends’ engagement in higher education for students from underrepresented groups [13,14,21].

Within this framework, we define mentors as adults with social and cultural capital who help underrepresented students “decode” cultural dialogues and adapt to social worlds, such as those in higher education and scholarship, that are vastly different from their familial and community environments [17,19,22]. Mentors for college students can extend beyond faculty members and can also include academic staff and graduate students [17]. Academic mentors are particularly vital for students at Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), as these institutions predominantly serve large populations of first-generation college students, low-income students, and students from racially minoritized backgrounds [23].

According to Kiyama and Harper [13], family and friends are resources for students who can assist with their academic goals, persistence, and degree attainment, even though institutions of higher education might miss or disregard these important contributions toward student success. This is especially true for students from underrepresented backgrounds, such as families of color, first-generation, and low-income families [24]. Moreover, several studies have noted that diverse families and those from collectivist orientations become one of the most important assets that lead to college student success [25]. Therefore, in our undergraduate research training model for HSIs, we draw on a more inclusive lens and consider diverse families’ and friends’ engagement as an asset in supporting their children’s education in college and graduate school. Thus, it is natural that we explicitly integrate families and friends as part of our HSI undergraduate research training program’s mentoring network as part of our conceptual framework, as displayed in Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows how the activities in our one-year HSI undergraduate research training program support and mediate the interactions between fellows and their mentors. On the left side of Figure 1, the circle delineates the fellow’s learning outcomes, while the right circle outlines the mentor’s contributions where mentors include families, friends, faculty, and academic staff. These mentor–mentee interactions are mediated by the research-supported activities comprised in this training program. The development of these mentoring processes is mediated by an organized collection of orchestrated research experiences and activities that include weekly seminars, research apprenticeships, the ETS Young Scientists Institute, the Stanford Summer Research Institute, the Georgia State University Systematic Review Institute, the UW Madison Interdisciplinary Training Program seminars, preparation for graduate school applications, and summer research internships. These activities aim to foster development in four key areas and learning outcomes: goal setting, role modeling, psychological and emotional well-being, and subject-specific research knowledge.

The mentoring network is integrated by all the actors facilitating the research experiences, which includes a variety of agents across a complex of different sociocultural worlds and institutions. The relationship between mentees and the different mentors from their network leads to a multi-way exchange of comprehensive development and support. Mentors, as a collective, provide students with rich opportunities to increase social capital and the needed institutional support in overcoming obstacles as they navigate authentic research experiences [17,18]. Concurrently, mentees become empowered agents to change the world [20] as they develop funds of knowledge that become useful in gaining social capital and institutional support in overcoming obstacles and managing mentoring relationships, including socially acceptable ways of using language and communication, task-specific knowledge, organizational and bureaucratic knowledge about how higher education institutions operate, network development, study skills, knowledge of labor and educational markets, and problem-solving knowledge [19], developing in students a sense of belonging to academia [26] while still keeping connected to their communities of origin and their roots through the mentoring of family and friends [13].

Based on Schwartz and Rhodes [27], we propose four categories to characterize the areas of development and support from the inclusive mentoring network for underrepresented students as a result of the interaction between mentors and mentees. These are goal setting, role modeling, psychological and emotional well-being, and subject and research knowledge. For this study, we operationalize these characteristics within our HSI undergraduate research training program as follows:

(1)

goal setting: identifying pathways for careers in education research, identifying graduate school programs, developing a Curriculum Vitae, and putting together graduate school applications;

(2)

role modeling: understanding the university, conducting and presenting research, and pursuing a career pathway in education research;

(3)

socio-emotional development: Life-work-academic balance, time management, coping with COVID, mental health, and wellness;

(4)

subject and research knowledge: taking on a researcher role, identifying a research topic, articulating a research question, developing a literature review, identifying research articles and other scholarly sources, connecting with experts in the field/topics of interest, training on human subject research, submitting an application protocol for human subject research, developing a research artifact such as an academic poster, research methods, collecting data, analyzing data, and academic writing.

Mentoring, thus, involves transversality across the formal activities within our training program, which are purposefully designed for mentees to develop meaningful relationships with faculty, academic staff, peers, family members, and friends, who collectively provide different types of support for their academic and career attainment as scholars.

3. Methods

3.1. Research Design

We conducted a concurrent mixed methods study, where qualitative and quantitative data were gathered simultaneously [28]. To address the research question, we designed and conducted an online end-of-program survey where fellows self-reported on the level of support they had received from members of their mentoring network for each area of development, as characterized by our conceptual framework: goal setting, role modeling, psychological and emotional well-being, and subject and research knowledge. This survey consisted of 28 closed-ended questions and five open-ended questions. For the closed-ended questions, fellows responded by self-reporting on the level of support each mentor/mentoring group provided over their time in the HSI undergraduate research training program. Their responses were provided on a given scale from 1–4, where 1 indicated little support, 2 indicated some support, 3 indicated quite a bit of support, 4 indicated a lot of support, and NA indicated not applicable. The open-ended questions were designed to allow fellows to provide more thorough descriptions on their goals, changes in their goals, and comments on their mentoring network support.

3.2. Participants

The participants in our study involved 17 undergraduate juniors from underrepresented backgrounds admitted as fellows to a HSI undergraduate research training program in the south of the United States. Students’ majors represented all colleges at the HSI, and all fellows had a specific research interest in studying an issue related to education equity, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Fellows represented a diverse group, most of them being first-generation students, students of color, students who had been transferred from community colleges, were veterans, or non-traditional students with children of their own, to mention a few characteristics.

3.3. Data Collection and Data Analysis

The data for the analysis came from the fellows’ responses to both open-ended and closed-ended questions in the survey implemented via Qualtrics. All responses were reviewed and organized for analysis.

3.3.1. Quantitative Analysis

We analyzed the fellows’ responses to the closed-ended questions on their scores for the level of support they received from each group in the mentoring network, and calculated averages on their aggregated responses for each of the four assessed criteria: goal setting, role modeling, psychological and emotional well-being, and subject and research knowledge. To identify the support from different members of the mentoring network within the program, we created a web or radar chart to visualize fellows’ aggregated responses (see Figure 2). Specifically, we included the following mentors/mentoring groups: HSI faculty mentors, HSI undergraduate research training program staff, peers in their training program, the ETS team, the Stanford team, the UW Madison team, and family and friends. We also analyzed fellows’ responses specifically related to the level of support they received from family and friends on each of the four criteria.

In addition, we created a bar graph (Figure 3) to compare responses from students who had reported to be pursuing or having pursued graduate studies after two and a half years from the time they finished the program with responses from those fellows who had not reported graduate student status.

3.3.2. Qualitative Analysis

We analyzed fellows’ responses to the open-ended questions requesting their input in three areas: goals they had at the end of the training program, how these goals changed during the year of the training program, and any additional comments they wanted to add on their mentoring network. The responses to the open-ended questions were organized and analyzed using NVIVO 12. Fellows’ responses were coded based on the four assessed criteria (goal setting, role modeling, psychological and emotional well-being, and subject and research knowledge) as a priori coding [29]. We also sought any responses who mentioned family and friends to see if these quotes related to any of the four criteria.

4. Results

The survey administered to the fellows at the end of the program had a 94% response rate. The web chart resulting from our analysis is shown in Figure 2. Each criterion is represented by a different color, and each member of the mentoring network is represented by a node. The higher the score is for a particular mentor, the further away it is from the center.

The results indicate that the strongest support in each of the four categories, as per fellows’ responses, was from faculty and academic mentors distributed in all the participating institutions. Fellows reported having received strong support from their family and friends in three of the four categories (with a score of three or higher out of four), although in relation to other mentors, support was not scored as high as the one for distributed faculty and academic mentors. The highest score for family and friends was reported in the psychological and emotional category, which was as high as that from the other mentors in the network. In the categories of goal setting and role modeling, family and friends had a similar score, although it was slightly lower than the score for the other (academic) mentors in the network. Fellows reported the lowest score of about 2.3 (between some support and quite a bit of support) for family and friends in the category of subject and research knowledge.

In our analysis of fellows’ responses specifically related to the level of support they received from family and friends on each of the four criteria, we compared responses from two mutually exclusive groups: fellows who had reported to be pursuing or having pursued graduate studies two-and-a-half years after they had completed the program, and fellows who had not reported graduate student status after two-and-a-half years after program completion. We created a bar graph in Figure 3 to illustrate our results comparing both groups, graduates and post-baccalaureates, in each of the four categories of mentoring support: psychological and emotional, goal setting, subject and research knowledge, and role modeling.

Figure 3 shows that in the category of psychological and emotional support, post-baccalaureates reported a higher score (+0.5) of support from their family and friends than those who went into graduate programs, with both groups reporting a strong level of support. Graduates reported a similar score for support received from family and friends in goal setting, which was also similar to the score from post-baccalaureates in the same category. The score for role modeling was similar for both groups (post-baccalaureates and graduates), reporting quite a bit of support. Post-baccalaureates reported the lowest score for support received from family and friends in the category for subject and research knowledge, with a score of two (some support), whereas graduates provided a higher score (2.57) in this category.

In the open-ended questions, responses were varied and supportive of the distributed mentoring network being critical in strongly and holistically supporting fellows throughout their program in all four criteria and helping them develop funds of knowledge to successfully navigate academic spaces [16]. For instance, fellows described how participating in the program, along with the mentor and peer support they received, helped them refine their academic goal setting. One fellow stated: “Before [name is blinded] Pathways, I did not think much about graduate programs, but after completing this program and hearing from the wonderful and knowledgeable scholars, I’ve decided that I too can contribute to my field outside the classroom. I realize how important it is for minorities to occupy space in higher education. Our state and our communities benefit from having more people of color working toward a more equitable society. Thus, I feel it is my responsibility to use my talents for the benefit of the community”.

The role of mentors and activities aimed at developing subjects and research knowledge were pivotal in sparking the fellows’ interest and understanding of educational research. For example, one fellow mentioned: “Through my experiences with the Pathways program, I have been able to understand the meaning of educational research. Working with my mentor on completing a research study has really broadened my horizons”. Furthermore, the network of mentors and researchers contributed to both the academic development and the psychological and emotional well-being of the fellows. For instance, one fellow mentioned: “My mentor [name is blinded] was probably one of the best mentors I ever had. She was not only good at guiding me through my research journey, but she was also understanding and compassionate. [Mentor name] took the time to explain things thoroughly, ensuring that I understood. I would not have been successful without her”. Another fellow expressed: “[P.I. and Academic Staff member] Thank you for everything you have given us over the past year. With the challenges and stress we all faced, you were a constant source of support in our hectic lives”.

When coding responses for any reference to support received from family and friends, the quotes were not very frequent. We attribute this to the fact that the questions did not directly ask students to provide information about their family and friends. However, there is a quote that was especially intriguing from one of the fellows. When asked if she wanted to add any comments regarding the mentoring network, she replied: “Thank you all so much for everything. I’ve loved getting to know you all as scholars and professionals. I admire each and everyone of you and will never forget my pathways family”.

In this quote, we see this fellow referring to the HSI undergraduate research training program leading staff as her “pathways family”. This is relevant because in some way, this fellow is acknowledging characteristics from her family to the staff who led the program, relating a sense of closeness, connection, and shared identity as a scholar and professional.

5. Discussion

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the field by better understanding the role of family and friends within an orchestrated network of mentors who provide support to undergraduate fellows from minoritized groups at a HSI in their pathways toward graduate studies in educational research.

Consistent with previous studies [16], our analysis from the web chart supports our conclusion that having a mentoring network formed by a diversified group of scholars, academic staff, peers, and friends and family members that is multi-institutional and provides support from multiple perspectives, is critical to the success of undergraduate students’ preparation toward graduate studies.

As shown in Figure 3, after two and a half years from the time they finished the program, all students had reported graduating from their college with a degree, with 50% in a graduate program or having graduated with a master’s degree. The other 50% were reported as post-baccalaureate and currently working as schoolteachers or in other careers. Although our sample is small, we consider these to be excellent results if we compare this cohort of fellows to the 2020 U.S. Census where only 11% of Latinx report to have completed a college degree and only 6% report to have completed postgraduate studies [1].

6. Conclusions and Implications

Based on our results, our conclusion is consistent with previous studies calling for the need to establish a more inclusive lens to engage diverse families as part of their children’s college experience for student success [13,14]. Our study is supported in this earlier work [13,14] by providing a theoretically informed framework for our HSI undergraduate research training program that intentionally incorporates family and friends as part of students’ mentoring network. This study extends the findings from these previous studies by identifying more specifically the type of support that family and friends can provide for student success in college graduation and graduate school preparation. We conclude that for students participating in the HSI undergraduate research training program, the role of family and friends is perceived to be as strong as the one provided by other academic mentors in their mentoring network in socio-emotional development and goal setting. The role of family and friends is perceived as strong as their program peers in role modeling, although it is stronger for other academic mentors in the same category. Students perceived the lowest support from their family and friends in the subject and research knowledge category when compared to their academic mentors and their program peers.

With respect to students’ perceived support from family and friends in the four categories: goal setting, role modeling, psychological and emotional well-being, and subject and research knowledge, we compared students’ scores between those who graduated from their college with a degree with those who went to graduate school after graduation; we observed that scores were similar for goal setting and role modeling. However, we see opposite differences in the other two categories. For post-baccalaureates, their perceived psychological and emotional support from family and friends was much stronger (+0.5) than that perceived by the graduates. For graduates, their perceived support was much stronger (+0.57) for subject and research knowledge than that perceived by the post-baccalaureates. We observed that for students who went to graduate school, the topic they selected for research was strongly connected to a family-related experience that impacted their life. For example, one of the fellows, who was a first-generation student, was inspired by the example of his single mother who worked through hardship to ensure he obtained a college degree (role model) and during his college years, his mother’s cancer diagnosis inspired him to pursue a degree in medical education (subject and research knowledge). Therefore, students can become more motivated and supported by family and friends by making more connections between the funds of knowledge generated in their home environments and those generated through academic experiences. An undergraduate research training program can assist in helping students make those connections more explicit and acknowledge the contributions that family and friends have in their academic and professional pathways as they become more meaningful for them.

As a program supporting undergraduate research experiences for underrepresented students at a HSI, we learned two important lessons. First, it is important that we intentionally create opportunities within the program activities to make more direct connections between family and friends and the support and engagement they provide to students who are in a research training program. These direct connections can assist fellows in being more cognizant of the relevance of their family and friends and their role and contributions in their academic success and as a scholar. We also acknowledge that the relationships that are built between academic mentors and mentees for students from underrepresented groups can be as close and important for students as those connections they have with their own family and friends. This closeness notes a sense of belonging of the student as a scholar and a professional where academia becomes as much a part of students’ identity as the student becomes part of academia.

Our findings also lead to important practical implications for us in the design of our HSI undergraduate research training program. Not only are we now more explicitly making those connections between research activities we provide fellows and their family and friends conceiving them as assets to the program, but we are also inviting family and friends to several of our events, such as a session where students are given an overview of how to apply to graduate school and financial opportunities to fund graduate programs. We plan to include more instances of building program activities from students’ funds of knowledge, where their family and friends are better acknowledged as a critical support to students’ success academically and as scholars. These changes also open future research directions for our work to continue understanding the support that family and friends bring to student success and factors that contribute to designing effective research training programs and implementing best practices, especially for students from underrepresented backgrounds, that will indeed broaden participation in education research and bring novel ideas and perspectives for a more equitable educational system while valuing their cultural contributions as assets.

We end with a remark from one of the fellows, who has been an inspiration for this study and our work.

“Thank you for giving me this opportunity. You will forever remain in my heart. Please do keep giving opportunities to immigrants like me. We often don’t know how the system works and, thus, we don’t know about the opportunities available. There are brilliant, hard-working, immigrant students that came to this country not only to work hard and have a better life, but also to contribute to the success and progress of this nation. Thank you for all you do”.

The quote highlights how this research experience evokes a connection to the program that is reminiscent of a familial bond. For the participants, this program created opportunities for students who do not typically have access to undergraduate research programs that are intentional in including family and friends, specifically for groups that have traditionally been marginalized and excluded from graduate education. We hope this work continues to evolve in ways that continue creating pathways to broaden and prepare a new generation of scholars in educational science.