Understanding our students : how aspects of students' pre-collegiate lives correlate with self advocacy, confidence, and risk taking

Abstract

A US childhood trauma epidemic has created lifelong negative effects for children across the US. In addition to being connected to long term health conditions, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) make it difficult for students to learn in traditional classrooms. Although trauma-informed teaching has become popular in the K-12 setting in recent years, college classrooms remain essentially unstudied and unchanged. To measure the extent to which potentially traumatic events correlate with the self confidence, self-advocacy, and student risk-taking for MIT students, a survey of mechanical engineering undergraduates was conducted. Results suggest that ACEs are prevalent among the mechanical engineering undergraduate student body with 45% of respondents reporting at least 1 ACE. Indicators for self-confidence and self-advocacy were found to show statistically significant differences between students who reported exposure to potentially traumatic events and those who reported no exposure to potentially traumatic events. In addition, correlations were found linking exposure to ACEs with metrics of student connection to community, choice of major, and which type of class they prefer. Other diversity metrics such as gender and minority status showed correlations in some of these areas. This data indicates that students exposed to one or more potentially traumatic events may be less likely to advocate for themselves than their peers with no ACEs. The data also indicates that students who have experienced one or more potentially traumatic events are more polarized in their ability to advocate for themselves, with some demonstrating greater affinity for self advocacy and some demonstrating lesser affinity for self advocacy.