An Analysis of a Decade of Data on Multilingual Student Affect and Performance to Evaluate Inclusion and Equity in Seven Non-Major Undergraduate Biology Courses at One University
Multilingual students represent a large population of the U.S., as 21.6% of the U.S. population in 2021 spoke a language other than English at home (Korhonen, 2024). Many of these students are required to take non-majors biology courses to fulfill particular graduation requirements in college. However, much of the literature has focused on multilingual K-12 students in how they are feeling and performing (Niehaus et al., 2016; Al-Mutawah & Fateel, 2018). It is unclear how university multilingual students are feeling and performing in their courses compared to their monolingual peers. It is important to look deeper into these concepts as our U.S. classrooms must support all students, regardless of their demographic background. To understand how multilingual students are feeling and performing, I analyzed likert-scale data concerning their affect (i.e. academic self-efficacy, science confidence, and science identity) and final grade in the course. I used survey data from an R1 institution from seven non-majors biology courses over the past nine years (N = 16,772 students). I compared multilingual and monolingual students’ final course grades and self-reported measures of student affect and correlated each construct of student affect and course grade for multilingual students. Multilingual students received lower course grades and reported lower mean post scores for all constructs of student affect compared to their monolingual peers. Additionally, there was a positive correlation between all constructs of student affect and official course grade for multilingual students. This study highlights potential opportunity gaps that exist at the college level where not all students are benefitting from these environments. This research provides insight into future directives to better support multilingual students by promoting self-efficacy at the college level to address these gaps, and also to encourage undergraduate non-majors biology instructors to reflect on their classroom practices to benefit all students.