“Are they like me?”: Assessing college math students’ academic and personal similarity perceptions of female peer role models

Past laboratory work has shown that exposure to similar peers who represent success in STEM (i.e., math-talented female peer role models) can bolster female college students’ math performance and STEM experiences. What is less clear is how students at intersecting identities of gender, ethnicity, and math identification differ in their similarity perceptions of female peer role models (PRMs) as well as how the PRMs’ ethnicity and background information (i.e., academic-related and personal-related) influences students’ similarity perceptions. In the current work, Latina and White female PRMs gave two presentations in college Calculus classes over the course of one semester. After the second presentation students completed quantitative and qualitative measures to assess perceived similarity with the PRMs. Across both measures results showed that (1) students generally perceived themselves to be similar to PRMs, (2) students felt more academically than personally similar to PRMs, (3) when the PRMs’ ethnicity matched the students’ ethnicity the academic-personal similarity difference was smaller, and (4) depending on students’ gender and level of math identification their similarity perceptions differed. Given PRM similarity has been shown to be a significant factor in the effectiveness of PRMs these findings emphasize the importance of considering students’ intersecting identities and PRM background information when attempting to highlight similarity with PRMs.