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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 reflecting 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. 

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2. POSSIBILITIES AND PROMISES OF USING ARGUMENTATION IN THE TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, AND CODING

   Menke, J. (January 2021, Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)

   In this presentation, the research team discussed teachers' facilitation of argumentation in teaching computer programming (or coding) and how it related to their epistemic beliefs about mathematics and science. The preliminary results showed that teachers engaged their students in both justificatory and inquiry arguments when teaching coding. This was not the case with respect to mathematics and science, in which teachers described engaging students either in justificatory or inquiry argumentation exclusively. The team proposes that these siloed uses of argumentation in mathematics and science relate to the teachers' epistemic beliefs about the disciplines, and their use of argumentation in coding builds on and goes beyond their experiences with argumentation in teaching mathematics and science. 

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3. WHAT INFLUENCES DO INSTRUCTORS OF THE GEOMETRY FOR TEACHERS COURSE NEED TO CONTEND WITH?

   Herbst, P. (October 2018, Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)

   T.E. Hodges, G. J. (Ed.)

   This paper reports on a project aimed at developing a system of professional support for the improvement of the Geometry for Teachers course that mathematics departments teach to preservice secondary teachers. We share data from interviews with 20 instructors to report on how they perceive their position of geometry instructors and the work they do in the course. To inspect this set of interviews, we use the framework of professional obligations to the discipline, to individual students, to the institution, and to the classroom community. We share how references to these professional obligations emerged in the interview data. 

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4. Analyzing the development of MKT in content courses

   Lai, Y.; Strayer, J.; Lischka, A. E. (January 2018, Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)

   To improve teaching and learning in content courses for secondary mathematics teachers, we take the approach of supporting faculty who teach these courses – often mathematics faculty – in developing their own mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) at the secondary level. We describe a framework that has informed the design of educative curricula for a set of these courses. This framework integrates theory for knowledge development, empirical work on dimensions of knowledge used in teaching, and findings on observable behaviors in teaching that reveal prospective secondary teachers’ knowledge development. 

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5. Analyzing the development of MKT in content courses

   Lai, Y.; Strayer, J. F.; Lischka, A. E. (November 2018, In T.E. Hodges, G.J. Roy, & A.M. Tyminski, A. M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)

   To improve teaching and learning in content courses for secondary mathematics teachers, we take the approach of supporting faculty who teach these courses – often mathematics faculty – in developing their own mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) at the secondary level. We describe a framework that has informed the design of educative curricula for a set of these courses. This framework integrates theory for knowledge development, empirical work on dimensions of knowledge used in teaching, and findings on observable behaviors in teaching that reveal prospective secondary teachers’ knowledge development. 

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