A literature review of campus climate in higher education literature: Native and Black perspectives.

Abstract

Native and Black populations have long, troubled histories with American colleges and universities. In order to have a better understanding of campus climate and sense of belonging among Native and Black students, we conducted a literature review to produce a summary specific to Native and Black students in higher education. In a total of 182 articles published within the United States between 2010 and 2021, we found four major themes: (a) the prominence of certain theoretical frameworks that were not rooted in Indigenous and Black ways of knowing, (b) limited specificity in target audience and recommendations, (c) oversaturation on undergraduate White student data and conflation of identity, and (d) limited nuanced campus climate methods and methodology. Implications for future studies and recommendations for higher education researchers are provided that account for issues of race, racism, power, and sovereignty in postsecondary settings.

A systematic review of campus climate assessments at institutions of higher education.

“…The wide variation in the number of items (from 3 to over 200) highlights a contextual variation in the administration of campus climate assessments. Additionally, the conceptual framework by Hurtado (1992) and Hurtado et al (1999) was frequently cited, consistent with Begaye-Tewa et al (2023), albeit in a limited number of assessments.…”

“…Given that scholarly evidence often emphasizes the complexity and expansive scope of campus climate (e.g., Begaye-Tewa et al, 2023), a federal task force or scholarly consortium could undertake the development and validation of core sets of campus climate assessment items across relevant domains. The current findings indicated that the guidelines introduced by the White House Task Force (2014) and the publicly available validation guidelines (Krebs et al, 2016) have notably facilitated more campus climate assessments focused on sexual assault, thus providing content validity evidence compared to assessments addressing broad aspects of campus climate.…”

“…With the focus on Native and Black students, Begaye-Tewa et al (2023) conducted a review of 182 articles on campus climate that were published in 11 higher education journals between 2010 and 2021. The results showed that the most frequently cited theoretical frameworks were those related to a sense of belonging (34.9%), drawing on Maslow (1954) and Tinto (1975), and campus climate/campus racial climate (32.1%), rooted in Hurtado et al (1998).…”

“…Adopting the methodological approaches for systematic review explained in Krause et al (2019) and Begaye-Tewa et al (2023), data were collected from gray literature, such as annual reports and technical documents that published between January 2016 and May 2023. In addition, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (Moher et al, 2009) were used to create our review protocol.…”

“…In 2008, a special issue of the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education underscored methodological inconsistencies and conceptual ambiguities in campus climate studies, while providing recommendations for future directions in the measurement of campus climates (Worthington, 2008). Nevertheless, discussions persist regarding the establishment of a unified conceptualization of campus climate and its constituent elements (e.g., Abrica et al, 2023; Begaye-Tewa et al, 2023; Vaccaro, 2014). Wood et al (2017) brought attention to the extensive range and varying levels of institutional support and use, resulting in variations in campus climate assessments.…”