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1. Theoretical perspectives for developing antiracist teaching dispositions and practices in preservice teacher education

   https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21757  

   Madkins, Tia C.; Nazar, Christina Restrepo (September 2022, Science Education)

   For some time, scholars who are guided by critical theories and perspectives have called out how white supremacist ideologies and systemic racism work to (re)produce societal inequities and educational injustices across science learning contexts in the United States. Given the sociopolitical nature of society, schooling, and science education, it is important to address the racist and settled history of scientific disciplines and science education. To this end, we take an antiracist stance on science teaching and learning and seek to disrupt forms of systemic racism in science classrooms. Since teachers do much of the daily work of transforming science education for minoritized learners, we advocate for preparing teachers who understand what it means to engage in antiracist, justice-oriented science teaching. In this article, we share our framework for supporting preservice teachers in understanding, developing, and implementing antiracist teaching dispositions and instructional practices. In alignment with other researchers in teacher education who emphasize the importance of anchoring teacher education practice and research in prominent educational theory, we highlight the theories undergirding our approach to antiracist science teaching. We offer considerations for how researchers and science teacher educators can use this framework to transform science teacher education. 

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2. Implementing an epistemologically authentic approach to student-centered inquiry learning

   Brookes, David T.; Etkina, Eugenia; Planinsic, Gorazd (December 2020, Physical review)

   This paper discusses the theoretical framework and curriculum materials that form the basis of the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach to learning and teaching physics. ISLE as a philosophical approach to learning, has two core intentionalities: 1. We want students to learn physics by thinking like physicists; by engaging in knowledge-generating activities that mimic the actual practices of physics and using the reasoning tools that physicists use when constructing and applying knowledge. 2. The way in which students learn physics should enhance their well-being. These intentionalities form the basis upon which we build a bricolage of multiple theoretical perspectives. We will show how the ISLE approach and its implementation is shaped by a. the epistemological commitments of physics, b. the findings of cognitive science, c. theories of learning communities, and d. the perspective of universal design. We will present both qualitative and quantitative data that demonstrate the effectiveness of ISLE in helping students to achieve our intentionalities. We conclude with a call to curriculum developers and implementers to explicitly articulate their intentionalities and theoretical perspectives so that we may forge deeper connections between educational theories, curriculum development, and implementation. 

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3. Project adelante: An anti-deficit professional development program for university mathematics instructors

   Adiredja, Aditya; Civil, Marta; Jarnutowski, Becca (October 2024, RUME Proceedings)

   Cook, S; Katz, B; Moore-Russo, D (Ed.)

   In this report, we share the design of a year-long professional development program for university math instructors that we developed and refined as the Anti-deficit Learning and Teaching Project (Adelante). The program is a community learning project wherein minoritized students, STEM peer mentors, and math instructors (graduate students and instructional faculty) build relationships as they share their knowledge and experiences with race, gender, and mathematics. Culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billing, 1995) frames the goals of the community learning in terms of deep mathematical knowledge, cultural knowledge, and sociopolitical consciousness. The program activities are inspired by the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching project (Moll et al., 1992) wherein teachers are offered opportunities to build meaningful relationships with students and their communities. An anti-deficit perspective (Adiredja et al., 2020) guides the learning experience for all participants. Not only are minoritized students assumed to have cultural and intellectual assets for learning, but the project also aims to dismantle deficit master narratives (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) about these students and their capacity to learn. Instructors worked on explicitly challenging deficit narratives about their students as they engaged in the program’s activities. The project also takes an anti-deficit approach to instructor development, focusing on their individual growth and agency, joy in teaching, and mental health. We also position ourselves as learners to the experience and wisdom of the staff and students at the university cultural centers. The core activities for the PD engage teachers to: (a) participate in five PD meetings on anti- deficit teaching and Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) teaching method; (b) lead a five-day math summer bridge workshop in Pre-Calculus, Calculus I, II, Vector Calculus, or Linear Algebra immediately following the meetings; (c) participate in critical conversations about race and gender in STEM with students at the cultural centers; (d) conduct a semi-structure interview with one of their students from the summer workshop about their STEM experience; and (e) participate in group reflection meetings debriefing their experience in the activities. Preliminary analysis of two of the three cohorts of participants found that most instructors developed a more humanizing approach to their teaching and their students (Gutiérrez, 2018). IBL helped instructors to explicitly challenge deficit narratives about minoritized students in the classroom, wherein most observed their students engaging in deep mathematical reasoning. Interviewing one of their students also shifted deficit narratives that developed in the classroom for some instructors. The workshop served as a space to try out previously learned teaching ideas (student centered teaching) without constraints from curriculum and assessments. Doing so reinvigorated many instructors’ passion for teaching, especially those who are more experienced. 

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4. Creating Inclusivity in Engineering Teaching and Learning Contexts: Adapting the Aspire Summer Institute Model for Engineering Stakeholders

   Beverly, S. P.; Gillian-Daniel, D. L. (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   There have been many initiatives to improve the experiences of marginalized engineering students in order to increase their desire to pursue the field of engineering. However, despite these efforts, workforce numbers indicate lingering disparities. Representation in the science and engineering workforce is low with women comprising only 16% of those in science and engineering occupations in 2019, and underrepresented minorities (e.g., Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native) collectively representing only approximately 20% (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [NCSES], 2022). Additionally, engineering has historically held cultural values that can exclude marginalized populations. Cech (2013) argues that engineering has supported a meritocratic ideology in which intelligence is something that you are born with rather than something you can gain. Engineering, she argues, is riddled with meritocratic regimens that include such common practices as grading on a curve and “weeding” out students in courses.Farrell et al. (2021) discuss how engineering culture is characterized by elitism through practices of epistemological dominance (devaluing other ways of knowing), majorism (placing higher value on STEM over the liberal arts), and technical social dualism (the belief that issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion should not be part of engineering). These ideologies can substantially affect the persistence of both women and people of color–populations historically excluded in engineering, because their concerns and/or cultural backgrounds are not validated by instructors or other peers which reproduces inequality. Improving student-faculty interactions through engineering professional development is one way to counteract these harmful cultural ideologies to positively impact and increase the participation of marginalized engineering students. STEM reform initiatives focused on faculty professional development, such as the NSF INCLUDES Aspire Alliance (Aspire), seek to prepare and educate faculty to integrate inclusive practices across their various campus roles and responsibilities as they relate to teaching, advising, research mentoring, collegiality, and leadership. The Aspire Summer Institute (ASI) has been one of Aspire’s most successful programs. The ASI is an intensive, week-long professional development event focused on educating institutional teams on the Inclusive Professional Framework (IPF) and how to integrate its components, individually and as teams, to improve STEM faculty inclusive behaviors. The IPF includes the domains of identity, intercultural awareness, and relational skill-building (Gillian-Daniel et al., 2021). Identity involves understanding not only your personal cultural identity but that of students and the impact of identity in learning spaces. Intercultural awareness involves instructors being able to navigate cultural interactions in a positive way as they consider the diverse backgrounds of students, while recognizing their own privileges and biases. Relational involves creating trusting relationships and a positive communication flow between instructors and students. The ASI and IPF can be used to advance a more inclusive environment for marginalized students in engineering. In this paper, we discuss the success of the ASI and how the institute and the IPF could be adapted specifically to support engineering faculty in their teaching, mentoring, and advising. 

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5. You’re an Engineer? You Must Be Really Smart! A Theoretical Discussion of the Need to Integrate “Smart” into Engineering Identity Research

   https://doi.org/10.21061/see.86  

   Braaten, Bailey; Dringenberg, Emily; Kramer, Amy; Kajfez, Rachel (August 2023, Studies in Engineering Education)

   Background: Those who participate in engineering are often assumed to be smart by others. At the same time, the cultural construction of what counts as “smart” is biased and therefore functions as a barrier to broadening participation in engineering. While considerable work has been done to understand engineering identity, how students understand themselves as smart is rarely made explicit in engineering identity research. Purpose: This paper is a theoretical discussion which highlights the need for engineering identity research to integrate students’ understanding of themselves as smart. By not incorporating students’ understanding of themselves as smart explicitly in work on engineering identity, we allow the bias in what gets recognized as smart to remain implicit and oppressive. Scope: In this paper, we argue that the idea of smart is very salient in engineering contexts and contributes to inequity. Then, we demonstrate how three different framings of identity allow for the explicit integration of how students are understanding themselves as smart. We also present selected examples from our empirical data to illustrate the concrete ways in which students’ understandings of themselves as smart manifest in an engineering context. Conclusions: We provided explicit opportunities for researchers to integrate students’ understandings of themselves as smart across three different framings of identity and how such understanding has shown up in our empirical research. In doing so, we conclude that making “smart” explicit in engineering identity provides a way to understand the exclusionary nature of engineering, and a new lens to apply when considering efforts to broaden participation in engineering. 

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