Hidden Currents in the STEM Pipeline: Insights From the Dyschronous Life Episodes of a Minority Female STEM Teacher

Abstract

In this article, I use the idea of dyschrony to describe the multiple disjunctures experienced in a Hispanic woman's life as she struggled to gain full membership in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) community. Despite having earned a doctoral degree in chemistry and a teaching position in a STEM school, she was cognizant of how gender and race had marginalized her and her minority female students, making them feel like border members of the STEM community. She had formed a solidarity group within the STEM school. As I apply the construct of dyschrony to analyze the in-depth interviews with the teacher, I illuminate tensions in the STEM pipeline and suggest that one should be critical about the promise of social mobility. The forming of solidarity groups may contribute to positive experiences of minority girls in STEM schools. Dyschrony may be used as a helpful analytic construct to unpack the forces contributing to minority women's struggles in STEM fields and understand why they might leave.

Notes

1. The friction between the pipe wall and fluid flowing through the pipe can cause a local eddy current. Three kinds of fluid flow—laminar (adjacent layers of fluid slide past one another), turbulent (erratic flow in the form of cross currents), and transitional (a mixture of turbulence in the center of the pipepline and laminar flow near the edges)—can occur, depending on the frictional resistance of the pipe wall. I use this analogy to portray the complexity of experiences in the STEM conduit that is not usually apparent to others who are not minority women in the pipeline.

2. The STEM pipeline is metaphorically described as leaky when individuals do not continue to pursue postsecondary or college education and careers in the STEM fields. Findings show that, generally, more women than men exit from the STEM pipeline (NSF, 2007).

3. Etzkowitz et al. (1994) talked about the paradox in trying to attain a critical mass of women in academic departments. Segregation among women in the forming of groups could lead to isolation, deterring the purpose of helping women form solidarity groups.