Students in STEM Majors

Faculty Members Perception

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors are important areas of study in today’s higher education system. These areas of study are considered critical to various areas of the nation’s economy including healthcare and manufacturing sectors. Over the past few decades, students’ enrolment in STEM majors has become an important area of focus in higher education settings. As higher education institutions seek to enhance the number of students enrolling for these majors, a significant portion of these students are those with learning disability. Kreider et al. (2015) defines learning disability as a group of disorders that have negative effects on learning, listening, reading, thinking, speaking, computing, and writing skills. Therefore, students with learning disabilities face significant challenges in understanding concepts and learning materials in STEM majors. Love et al. (2014) states that students with learning disabilities face typical problems in their pursuit of STEM degrees as well as additional systemic barriers that affect their learning outcomes. Given these struggles, these students deal with misunderstanding and negative perceptions from different individuals including faculty. This paper proposes a study to examine how faculty members perceive having students with learning disability in STEM majors.

Background of the Problem

STEM fields and degrees have emerged as crucial factors in the economic growth of the nation since they make significant contributions to a wide range of issues including healthcare and the environment (Love et al., 2014). These fields/courses have received considerable attention in recent years since they are rooted in problem-solving skills that are akin to real-life situations that students are likely to experience in the future careers. As a result, there has been national focus and increased demand for STEM majors in today’s society. However, the number of American college students pursuing STEM degrees continues to be few in comparison to those pursuing other fields or courses. The increased focus on these fields has entailed encouraging students to enroll in these fields. Moreover, higher education institutions face high attrition rates in STEM fields as students are increasingly likely to switch to non-STEM majors (Love et al., 2014).

While there are fewer students pursuing STEM degrees, student with learning disability account for a relatively sizeable portion of this population. However, these students face several challenges and extra systemic barriers in their pursuit for STEM degrees. Most of these challenges emerge from the fact that they learn differently than other students (Kreider et al., 2015). Their challenges in learning are also attributable to the struggles they encounter in developing general skills like other students as classroom instruction is delivered in conventional means that do not match their learning styles or needs.

Kreider et al. (2015) states that student with learning disability have also had to deal with negative perceptions and misunderstanding from their classmates, family members, and the faculty as they pursue STEM majors. Faculty members in STEM majors seemingly have negative perceptions toward students with learning disabilities. These negative perceptions are partly fueled by the inadequate preparation of faculty members to address the needs of these students and design classroom instruction in a manner that is consistent with their learning needs. On the contrary, some studies have demonstrated that faculty members have positive perceptions regarding having students with learning disability in STEM majors. These positive perceptions arise when faculty members create a learning environment where they easily interact with such students and understand their needs. However, existing literature does not clearly demonstrate how faculty members perceive having students with learning disability in STEM majors.

Significance of Study

As demonstrated in the previous segment, there is a gap in existing literature on how faculty members perceive having students with learning disability in STEM majors. There is very limited research on this issue while existing studies provide contradictory information. Most of the existing studies on the issue have focused on the students’ self-perception and how they are perceived by their classmates. These studies seem to ignore the role faculty members’ perceptions play in these students’ mastery of the learning content, their achievements, and learning outcomes. Hedrick et al. (2010) states that the experiences and perceptions of student engagement and institutional performance among students with learning disability in STEM and non-STEM majors has been extensively documented in existing literature. Current literature is yet to comprehensively examine how faculty members perceive having students with learning disability in STEM majors.