ABSTRACT
The African-American women represents a large void in engineering degrees awarded, the relationship between their representation and persistence has received very little attention. This qualitative investigation focuses specifically on African-American women in engineering, and presumes that they face unique barriers in engineering education. Stereotype threat theory (STT) is a well-established framework that has received much attention from researchers for the past 20 years. The concept of STT was introduced by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson in the mid-1990s. CRT developed during the 1970s as a response to the failure of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) to adequately address the effects of race and racism in US jurisprudence. The qualitative approach adopted for this study is the CRT tenet of counterstorytelling. Counterstorytelling challenges the complacency of historically marginalized students to not accept the simple yet domineering narratives about the fate of their race. It gives them an opportunity to confront their own assumptions and notions about these narratives.
