Welcome Dr. Estrada.
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
I'm so happy that you're here with us today. So to get us started,
I want to ask a question about an acronym that is used that you use
in your work and it's P-E-E-R. Can you help unpack what that means?
Yeah. This actually comes from the work um from an article that was written by
David Asai who is from Howard Hughes Medical Institute
and it stands for People Excluded because of Ethnicity or Race or and Race and it's really
um a term that I've adopted because it describes the situation as opposed to "minorities," which
kind of says you're a small group um of people, which is actually less and less true every year.
And um I do use "historically underrepresented" sometimes because I think there is a history of
underrepresentation but I don't want to affirm that it's going to continue to be
that way. But the PEERs really talks about the exclusion that we're trying to stop
from happening. And I like that that it has that term in there. And that's how you stop ...
I like it too and I'm trying to also move away from using
the word minority and more the more active word minoritize, which has been helpful for me
to kind of also see how complicit I am in that process of minoritization unless I'm critically
making efforts not to be. So, um, thank you for that. You have this story that I've heard you tell
in a couple of presentations that you've done that really it was really it really stuck with
me and it's a story about um it's a story that I think was kind of a turning point in for you
with your own work. It has to do with it you know really kind of how we're looking at the
STEM problem. Can you share that story with us?
Sure. Um, this happened, gosh, i think almost 12 years ago. It's hard to believe
but, at the time, I was invited to a I think it was a triple A S meeting on
why uh certain ethnic groups were underrepresented in in science, and technology, engineering, and
mathematics, in STEM fields. And so um I was there and there was probably you know about 100 people.
They're all wonderful speakers um – Dr. Lent who does work on on efficacy and um Claude
Steele was there who does work on stereotype threat. And so there was this whole discussion
about why why people like me – who are Latina or African-American or Native American – why do we
leave the the sciences and the research fields? So the story is and it's a true story that I was
there and on the second day towards the afternoon there was all this discussion during the two days
a lot of it was on efficacy. So efficacy is like having confidence in being able to do the science.
And there was a lot of discussion about if you can just increase the efficacy of people like me um so
that we believed and had confidence in our ability and our skill level that we would continue on. And
I was just I just felt like I couldn't take anymore so I went outside of the room where
everybody was in the auditorium and went and stood outside. And what was funny was that out there was
you know seven or eight other people um and we, it turned out that we were all from underrepresented
groups um and that we had all left tenure-track or had had not gone into tenure-track positions. So
we were the people that they were talking about in the room um who had, who were leaving and
ironically we had left the room in which they were describing and talking about it because
we couldn't take it anymore. And so we started to have a really a real discussion about like,
well, why did you leave or why didn't you go or you know what are you doing now and one of the
things that I really heard as we were talking was just how oppressive and how difficult the social
environments were. That there was a sense of not fitting in and just it being tiring trying
to bridge the gap between our own cultures and the culture of of our disciplines. And that the value
systems of the disciplines really were not our own values and wondering really if it was meaningful
work to be doing. And here we are, we all had PhDs and were um you know fairly successful
uh and yet we had choice and if if the work did not matter to us why would we stay there? We could
go someplace else that where we could do work that matters to us and so um this kind of bridged
between, for me, uh work that I had done as a graduate student with Herb Kellman, which was on
how people integrate into communities and that's that has been the research
that I then went back to um a study that I was running and I added in the variable of values,
the science identity was already in there and efficacy was already in there and did
collected data to show, which eventually did in the 2011 publication, that the values and identity
were actually much more strongly predicted persistence for underrepresented groups than um
or historically underrepresented groups than than uh the efficacy and uh and that kind of launched a
whole bunch of research and kind of a new thinking about why people persist or don't persist. So.
Wow. I could hear you tell that story
over and over again and I think I take something different away from it every
time. It's really fascinating um, first of all, it clearly, obviously demonstrates the value of
diversity in pro solving problems, right? But that notion of that cultural mismatch and
how important it is to really be able to see that and be sure that we're designing environments that
are culturally responsive so we don't exclude people, yeah, and create those toxic environments.
Yep. And I think, I mean, another thing that's really interesting about that story
for me and thinking about it is that one of the things that sometimes happens when people
are talking about underrepresentation of historically underrepresented groups
is they talk about it as if we aren't in the room. And I think that's one of the things
that was exhausting about being there was it was as if we were invisible, you know,
THEY leave. But, actually, we are in the room right now and um and that
not it makes it reinforces the fact that that we aren't them because they're talking about them,
who are out there, right, who aren't staying, instead of WE are here some of us feel more
included than others. So let's talk about that. That so we we including everyone um as opposed to
them being outside the room when we're actually sitting in the room. So that that's something
to think about in classrooms too is who's "we" and is it including everybody who's in the room?
Yeah. I'm reflecting on my own language. Mmmmhmm. Ah.
Who's centered, right? So if we're centering the White experience than everybody
else is "other" but if we're centering all of our experiences collectively, then that's a different
kind of centering of our in our language and in our way of approaching our teaching.
So great. So good. Thank you so much. Um
okay, so next question ... You also use this phrase "ambiguous culture"
Oh, yeah.
Um and that's another one that's really stuck with me.
So I would like you to help unpack what ambiguous culture means and how kindness
cues of social inclusion, which again is a concept from your work, really um fits into that problem.
Yeah, so when we enter any space, even virtual spaces, we scan faces
and and people to see who's like us and who's not or who looks safe and who's not safe. And
if we walk into an environment or we look at an environment and we feel like there's other
people like us there really is kind of a deep ancient part of our brain that says it's safer
if there's other people like us in the room. And so when we walk into an environment or we're in
an environment where we're getting mixed cues – so some people look safe and some people don't
or some people speak and say things that feel safe and some people say and think and do things that
don't feel safe – this leads to ambiguity. So we feel we're not sure, we're not sure if it's a safe
space or not and by safe I think in the social terms I mean we feel we can be our authentic
self and be accepted for who that is. So there is a sense of physical safety, but there's also
a social safety. Can I show up fully as who I am and not be persecuted in any way for that,
be accepted? And so for people who don't come from the dominant White culture – the dominant culture,
it could be doesn't have to be White but in the United States that tends to be it –
there is a negotiation of, "Can I fit into this? Am I going to fit into this?" And different things
can cue different. So, for instance, all four of my grandparents were born in Mexico. My brother
has really dark skin. My dad has dark skin. My mom has light skin. I have light skin. So I
walk into environment if somebody doesn't know my name, they may not know what ethnicity I am
but I know. And I go into an environment and I'm looking so when there's ambiguity and I'm not sure
if if I fit in or not, if I belong or not, and the cues I'm getting let's say there's people in the
environment who are making derogatory comments about being immigrants, something like that.
I might feel like, oh that person is not so safe because they don't like people like me
and they don't like people like me being in this environment and that makes me start to scan
and make sure do I stay safe? Am I safe or not? And that takes up cognitive space in our brains
in our brains and that makes it less likely for me to be able to take in other information that might
be the learning information. So ambiguity happens, I define it in the paper as situations in which
you might have macroaffirmations – so there's signs and images that diversity
matters and we want everybody to be here but the microaffirmations, the subtle ways in which people
are communicating with me they might be saying things or treating me differently, that gives low
micro affirmation which gives a mixed message. And then there might be um very low macroaggression
so nobody's really saying things they're super prejudiced or holding anything against me but
there might be lots of microaggressions subtle ways in which people are are saying things and
doing things that don't feel affirming. So it can be a microaffirmation might be that
everybody gets called on equally in the in the class. A microaggression might be that that
men or White men are called on more often than than somebody who is um has darker skin and who
is a woman. So that would be an example kind of a micro, subtle way um and that the and it's really
those subtle micro ways are really complicated because if somebody calls it out they might go,
"Well that that had nothing to do with it," right? They they're able people can kind of they're not
clear it's not 100 percent clear that that was an aggression or an affirmation of any sort. So
so that's um that's the the ambiguous situations. And we are not designed for ambiguity, as we know
from doing COVID this last year. Lots and lots of ambiguity in our environment. We haven't
known a lot and you can feel the stress people should feel and know what that stress feels like
to not be sure about so much stuff. It really is hard on our bodies. It's hard on our
on our minds. I'm sure people who are out there experience times when it was hard to memorize
things and to remember things or you know that that's when things are ambiguous and we don't know
what's going on, it does impact our cognitive functioning and our emotional um well-being.
So, okay, so I have a follow-up question.
You mentioned that um that ambiguity exists in virtual places. Let's imagine being in an online
class that's asynchronous, which primarily in higher education leans on the written word.
So you don't have the maybe the traditional safety cues that you're used to scanning for without
even being really without even recognizing that you're really scanning for them, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So what effect does that have on a person? And do you agree that, you know,
using brief video clips, friendly video clips to welcome students is a form of
a micro affirmation that would be helpful to kind of alleviate that ambiguous, ambiguity?
Yeah. I think that that's really um yeah it's really important. I think we get a
lot more information from visual than we do from writing or from just a picture, although pictures
can send a lot of information. But but, yeah, I think that video um really matters. And I, you
may be familiar with the research by uh Dr. Nalini Ambady, which has to do with thin slices and how
uh students that were she she had tapes of faculty giving kind of their intro to a course and she
looked to see how much time um students had to see these videos in order to be able to
predict the overall evaluation of the professor at the end of the semester. Do you remember this?
Um, now I do. Yeah.
It was in um Blink, he writes about it in Blink but the research is by Nalini Ambady
and and what she found was I think it takes like 30 seconds
of a video clip, very thin slice, for students to be able to predict how well that professor did in
in the course, you know overall evaluation. Okay, so there's a couple things that are really
pertinent for us here. One is that they used video clips to test that. That the students that were in
the classroom and the person who watched the video clips got very gave very similar evaluations.
So that intro video that you do is super important because it tells people a lot of
information. And it's impression formation. You're you're creating that first impression
that basically gives a framework in which other information will then be integrated into
so that first impression is super important. And another thing that's pretty interesting about that
that first impression – and and this goes back to whether you're centering or not centering the
the kind of mainstream White experience – so one thing that we know or that we've learned from a
there was an article that was recently published by Angela Byars-Winston and she talks about the
cultural awareness of of mentors but it applies to this too. Because one of the things she talks
about is how acknowledging that we all have different cultures is important – so that's
that's de-centering the White experience – so we're not assuming everybody has the same culture,
but but widening out that we all have culture, right? We all come with culture, with things that
we bring and that's another thing that I think helps de-center kind of the dominant culture. By,
in your introduction, acknowledging that we all come with different valuable cultural experiences
that will help inform the work that we're doing going forward and the learning and all of that.
So there's another place where I think, I think there's opportunity for setting an impression
and really prioritizing. So one of the old ways of thinking was that education was about assimilating
everybody into this one way of being. And if you don't want to assimilate then you're not going to
survive. That's that's the old-fashioned, colonized way of thinking about things.
And now we're moving past that. We're decolonizing our education system
and that means that we're no longer assimilating. We are affirming each other and who we are
and taking the best of that and using that for our education and and our thinking and
our innovation and our creativity and all those wonderful things that are available to us now.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for sharing. I have learned so much and I'm going to watch this video
I think 100 more times because I know I'm going to keep learning.
So i'm going to end there. Dr. Estrada, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us.