Cultivating Capital: Sustaining the STEM Identities of Rural Latinx Youth

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore how rural Latinx students’ STEM identity development can be fostered by utilizing their cultural capital. Using both a community cultural wealth and science identity model, this paper reviews previous literature to conceptualize how and why rural Latinx youth are continuously underrepresented within STEM education and future career pathways. When forming STEM identities and aspirations for the future, Latinx students draw from six forms of capital- aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant. Throughout this paper, we discuss each of these six forms of capital wealth and the value rural Latinx students can bring into STEM educational spaces. Supporting rural Latinx students’ STEM identity development is a vital key to the disruption of systemic inequalities that perpetuate societal and institutional spaces. Conclusions drawn from the literature showcase how cultural wealth sustains the development of Latinx students’ STEM identities. Future considerations need to focus on the STEM disparities that still exist for this population of students, but specifically those in rural communities.