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1. The role of epistemological beliefs in STEM faculty’s decisions to use culturally relevant pedagogy at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-022-00349-9  

   Shultz, Mollee ; Nissen, Jayson ; Close, Eleanor ; Van Dusen, Ben ( December 2022 , International Journal of STEM Education)

   Abstract Background The growing understanding of the oppressive inequities that exist in postsecondary education has led to an increasing need for culturally relevant pedagogy. Researchers have found evidence that beliefs about the nature of knowledge predict pedagogical practices. Culturally relevant pedagogy supports students in ways that leverage students’ own cultures through three tenets: academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness. If STEM practitioners believe that their disciplines are culture-free, they may not enact culturally relevant pedagogy in their courses. We investigated how and in what forms 40 faculty from mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology departments at Hispanic-Serving Institutions enacted culturally relevant pedagogy. We used the framework of practical rationality to understand how epistemological beliefs about the nature of their discipline combined with their institutional context impacted instructors’ decision to enact practices aligning with the three tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy. Results In total, 35 instructors reported using practices that aligned with the academic success tenet, nine instructors with the cultural competence tenet, and one instructor with the sociopolitical consciousness tenet. Instructors expressed and even lauded their disciplines’ separation from culture while simultaneously expressing instructional decisions that aligned with culturally relevant pedagogy. Though never asked directly, six instructors made statements reflectingmore »a “culture-free” belief about knowledge in their discipline such as “To me, mathematics has no color.” Five of those instructors also described altering their teaching in ways that aligned with the academic success tenet. The framework of practical rationality helped explain how the instructors’ individual obligation (to the needs of individual students) and interpersonal obligation (to the social environment of the classroom) played a role in those decisions. Conclusions Instructors’ ability to express two contradictory views may indicate that professional development does not have to change an instructor’s epistemological beliefs about their discipline to convince them of the value of enacting culturally relevant pedagogy. We propose departmental changes that could enable instructors to decide to cultivate students’ cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness. Our findings highlight the need for future research investigating the impacts of culturally relevant pedagogical content knowledge on students’ experiences.« less
2. Powerful Change Attends to Power Relations

   Davis, S. ; Kellam, N. ; Svihla, V. ; Vignesh Sundaram, B. ; Kalkiyo, J. ( January 2021 , 2021 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition)

   While changing engineering departments to become more inclusive and equitable is a common goal, research repeatedly confirms that such change is rare. Notably, change efforts commonly fail in higher education institutions (Kezar 2011), and this failure is typically attributed to faculty resistance, ineffective leadership, competing values, and conservative traditions (Klempin and Karp 2018). Recent nationwide National Science Foundation-funded efforts to revolutionize engineering departments provide insight into the salience of power dynamics as drivers of or barriers to equitable, lasting change. We interviewed members of these change teams to understand the challenges they encountered and how they navigated these. Using an intersectionality framework (Collins & Bilge, 2016) we explored four lenses on power relations: (1) from a structural lens, we see that policies may affect individuals differently based on their social and role identities; (2) from a cultural lens, ideas and culture organize power, often blinding those with privilege from noticing bias; (3) from a disciplinary lens, people train and coerce each other to behave in certain ways and to sustain norms; and (4) from an interpersonal lens, we see that an individual’s social (e.g., gender, ethnicity) and role (career, position, voluntary memberships) identities can shape how they experience bias. Usingmore »these lenses, we characterized ways members positioned themselves in relation to change efforts and the degree to which they held substantive power or were endangered through their participation. In many cases, disciplinary norms revealed clashes between the original structures and cultures, and the sought-after changed structures, cultures, and disciplinary practices. For some, such clashes revealed a veneer of change progress; for others, clashes served as inflection points. We share strategies for deliberately engaging power relations in change projects.« less
3. Powerful change attends to power relations

   Davis, S.C. ; Kellam, N. ; Svihla, V. ; Sundaram, B.V. ; Halkiyo, J.B. ( January 2021 , Proceedings of the ASEE 128th Annual Conference and Exhibition)

   While changing engineering departments to become more inclusive and equitable is a common goal, research repeatedly confirms that such change is rare. Notably, change efforts commonly fail in higher education institutions (Kezar 2011), and this failure is typically attributed to faculty resistance, ineffective leadership, competing values, and conservative traditions (Klempin and Karp 2018). Recent nationwide National Science Foundation-funded efforts to revolutionize engineering departments provide insight into the salience of power dynamics as drivers of or barriers to equitable, lasting change. We interviewed members of these change teams to understand the challenges they encountered and how they navigated these. Using an intersectionality framework (Collins & Bilge, 2016) we explored four lenses on power relations: (1) from a structural lens, we see that policies may affect individuals differently based on their social and role identities; (2) from a cultural lens, ideas and culture organize power, often blinding those with privilege from noticing bias; (3) from a disciplinary lens, people train and coerce each other to behave in certain ways and to sustain norms; and (4) from an interpersonal lens, we see that an individual’s social (e.g., gender, ethnicity) and role (career, position, voluntary memberships) identities can shape how they experience bias. Usingmore »these lenses, we characterized ways members positioned themselves in relation to change efforts and the degree to which they held substantive power or were endangered through their participation. In many cases, disciplinary norms revealed clashes between the original structures and cultures, and the sought-after changed structures, cultures, and disciplinary practices. For some, such clashes revealed a veneer of change progress; for others, clashes served as inflection points. We share strategies for deliberately engaging power relations in change projects.« less
4. Constructing a comprehensive and adaptive survey for cultural analysis of engineering departments

   Berger, E. ; Briody, E. ; DeBoer, J. ; Rhoads, J. ; Francis, J. ; Witek, L. ; Rothstein, R. ; Lee, Y. ( December 2021 , Proceedings of REES AAEE 2021)

   ABSTRACT CONTEXT Culture influences the dynamics and outcomes of organizations in profound ways, including individual-level outcomes (like the quality of work products) and collective impacts (such as reputation or influence). As such, understanding organizational culture is a crucial element of understanding performance; from an anthropological perspective, ‘performance’ is not an outcome of culture, it is a part of culture. A key challenge in understanding organizational culture, especially in complex academic organizations, is the lack of a flexible, scalable approach for data collection and analysis. PURPOSE OR GOAL In this study, we report on our development of a survey-based cultural characterization tool that leverages both lightweight data collection from stakeholders in the organization and public information about that organization. We also integrate perspectives from prior literature about faculty, students, and staff in academic departments. Taken together, the resulting survey covers key elements of culture and allows for scalable data collection across settings via customizations and embedded logic in the survey itself. The outcome of this work is a design process for a new and promising tool for scalable cultural characterization, and we have deployed this tool across two institutions. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS We leverage prior research, our own preliminary data collection,more »and our experience with this approach in a different setting to develop a cultural characterization survey suitable for delivery to multiple engineering department stakeholders (faculty, staff, and students). We start with a modest number of interviews, stratified by these three groups and achieving saturation of responses, to understand their views on their organization, its strengths and weaknesses, and their perceptions of how it ‘works’. We merge this information with public data (for instance, departmental vision or mission statements, which convey a sense of priorities or values) as well as prior literature about higher education culture. We also draw upon our experience in another setting as well as pilot testing data, and the result is a carefully-constructed set of dichotomous items that are offered to department stakeholders in survey form using an electronic survey platform. We also collect background and demographic information in the survey. The resulting data are analyzed using Cultural Consensus Theory (CCT) to extract meaningful information about the departmental culture from the perspectives of the stakeholder groups. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES The resulting survey consists of two parts, each with sub-components. The two top level survey parts contain: (i) items common to all respondents in all settings (i.e. all institutions in this study), and (ii) a set of institution-specific items. Within those sections, the framing of the items is calibrated for the stakeholder groups so that items make sense to them within the context of their experience. The survey has been administered, and the data are being analyzed and interpreted presently. We expect the results to capture the specific elements of local culture within these institutions, as well as differences in perspectives and experience among the three primary stakeholder groups. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY This study demonstrates a scalable approach to survey development for the purposes of cultural characterization, and its use across settings and with multiple stakeholder groups. This work enables a very nuanced view of culture within a department, and these results can be used within academic departments to enable discussion about change, priorities, performance, and the work environment.« less
5. An Engineering Faculty and an Intention to Make Change for Diversity and Inclusion: Creating Sustainable Change Efforts

   Matters, M. E. ; Zoltowski, C. B. ; Brightman, A. O. ; Buzzanell, P. M. ( January 2021 , 2021 CoNECD)

   Scholars of engineering education have acknowledged a need for greater connection between research and engineering teaching practice in order to see sustainable change in engineering schools. This study examines the contrast between STEM education research on the positive impact of faculty on diversity and inclusion and some engineering faculty’s lack of actual involvement with these issues. We examine the faculty of an electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department at Purdue University using Fishbein and Ajzen’s reasoned action model for behavior to determine factors in the department that influence faculty’s intention to make change for diversity and inclusion. We conducted interviews with ECE faculty about diversity, inclusion and department culture, and then an inductive thematic analysis organized around the reasoned action model. The major themes revealed that many faculty do not see involvement with diversity and inclusion as a norm in the department, and do not recognize their power to influence these issues. Our conclusions provide recommendations for engineering departments to meaningfully involve their faculty in improving diversity and inclusion.