Abstract
This document analysis reviews 12 commercial and institution-specific Individual Development Plans (IDPs) and the web content used to frame them from 22 STEM undergraduate programs across the US. Positioned as an essential career planning tool for STEM students at undergraduate and graduate levels, IDPs are intended to promote student success through self-assessment, goal setting, and planning. Drawing from recent scholarship that underscores the role of community in first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students’ motivations to attend college, we used Yosso’s community cultural wealth (CCW) framework to explore what skills and values IDPs prioritized, how IDPs include or acknowledge different forms of capital (aspirational, familial, social, navigational, resistant, linguistic), and how IDPs framed the goal setting process. We found that IDPs touch upon some of CCW’s forms of capital, but they do not align with the theorized richness of CCW. Additionally, this superficial connection to CCW in IDPs was paired with a neoliberal framing of goal setting as a fixed process—one that is linear, time-bound, and competitive. The language and tone of these tools sits in tension with the inclusivity and community-centered ethos of CCW. Our findings suggest opportunities to incorporate CCW into goal setting and career planning tools, including making apparent the structural inequities that underrepresented students will encounter as they navigate STEM degrees and careers. This also implies opportunities for tools that reflect diverse epistemological approaches to goal setting.