Understanding the experiences of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) students in science courses can help us foster inclusivity and belonging for these often excluded and unacknowledged students. Using social influence theory as a framework, we investigated the intersection between ethnic-racial identity and science identity in NHPI students to better understand their experiences in undergraduate Biology courses. We collected both quantitative and qualitative data and used concurrent triangulation design in our mixed-methods approach. Quantitative data include measures of student pre- and post-course science identity, self-efficacy, alignment with science values, sense of belonging, environmental concern, strength of ethnic-racial identity, and the interaction between ethnic-racial and science identity. We measured environmental concern because NHPI cultures often have strong connections with the environment that may overlap well with environmental science values. Qualitative data included short responses to survey questions that asked students to describe the interaction between their science identity and their ethnicity. We found that NHPI and non-NHPI students do not significantly differ in any construct we measured, nor do they experience different gains across a semester when comparing pre- and post-scores. We also found that NHPI students’ feelings concerning the intersection of their ethnic and science identities are varied and complex, with some students expressing feelings of conflict and many others expressing a strengthening relationship between those identities. We discuss implications for instructors and encourage them to acknowledge the community culture of wealth NHPI students bring to the classroom because of their ethnic-racial identities.

Vol. 22, No. 4

December 01, 2023

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History

Submitted: 18 January 2023

Revised: 8 August 2023

Accepted: 15 August 2023

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© 2023 R. F. Greenall et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2023 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 4.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0).

We would like to acknowledge that Brigham Young University is situated on the traditional, unceded homelands of Noochee (“the people” in Ute) and of Indigenous peoples who have stewarded the land throughout generations. Utah is home to at least eight different tribal nations, and Utah Valley is the ancestral homeland of the Timpanogos, Ute, Newe (Shoshone), Goshute, and Paiute people. We recognize and respect the Noochee as the traditional stewards over the lands and waters on which we depend today.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant no. R0112436. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The authors would like to thank Badí Israel Quinteros Espinoza for assistance in preliminary data organization and Dr. Jamie Jensen for assistance with statistical analysis.

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