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1. Finding their voice: Support mechanisms to engage and empower future mathematics teachers.

   Gomez Johnson, K. (July 2019, Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership Conference)

   Smith, W. M. (Ed.)

   The NebraskaMATH Omaha Noyce Partnership Scholarship awards scholarships funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to undergraduate students interested in mathematics education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). Scholars, who are dual mathematics and secondary education majors, are engaged and supported by Noyce faculty to not only excel in their college coursework and career preparation, but also to serve the university and community through teaching assistantships and STEM community outreach. The main goal of this program is to strengthen and expand the pipeline for preparing high-quality teachers of mathematics to better meet the responsibilities and demands of local school districts, particularly those serving students with high-need. Cross-campus collaborations between the departments of teacher education and mathematics co-constructed the Noyce infrastructure to emphasize and share the development of future, high-quality secondary mathematics teachers (Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership, 2014). This paper describes our program’s unique design and implementation features aimed to empower, engage, and extend the talents of our undergraduate students. We share lessons learned and recommendations from faculty and participants regarding decisions and facets of the program considered to be most influential in STEM teacher and leadership development. 

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2. Look Who's Talking: Teaching and Discourse Practices across Discipline, Position, Experience, and Class Size in STEM College Classrooms

   https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab077  

   Alkhouri, Jourjina Subih; Donham, Cristine; Pusey, Téa S; Signorini, Adriana; Stivers, Alexander H; Kranzfelder, Petra (August 2021, BioScience)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Students are more likely to learn in college science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classrooms when instructors use teacher discourse moves (TDMs) that encourage student engagement and learning. However, although teaching practices are well studied, TDMs are not well understood in college STEM classrooms. In STEM courses at a minority-serving institution (MSI; n = 74), we used two classroom observation protocols to investigate teaching practices and TDMs across disciplines, instructor types, years of teaching experience, and class size. We found that instructors guide students in active learning activities, but they use authoritative discourse approaches. In addition, chemistry instructors presented more than biology instructors. Also, teaching faculty had relatively high dialogic, interactive discourse, and neither years of faculty teaching experience nor class size had an impact on teaching practices or TDMs. Our results have implications for targeted teaching professional development efforts across instructor and course characteristics to improve STEM education at MSIs. 

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3. Making STEM Equitable: An Active Learning Approach to Closing the Achievement Gap

   https://doi.org/10.15294/ijal.v5i2.23933  

   Christian Burke, Richard Luu (October 2020, International journal of active learning)

   null (Ed.)

   Active learning is a pedagogical approach which engages students in the learning process, aiming to optimize comprehension of educational material. Meta-analysis of current research shows maximum impact when applied to STEM education, especially for underrepresented minority (URM) students and students with a low GPA. This study focuses on student success, progression, completion and STEM interest within the General Chemistry course sequence at Blinded City College, which has a 51% Hispanic student population. Data from classes implementing active learning pedagogy consistently had higher success and progression rates, as well as increased progression success from General Chemistry 1 to General Chemistry 2, with a greater positive impact and completion success among Hispanic students compared to students from Asian populations, whose progression success was negatively impacted through use of active learning pedagogy in comparison to traditional lecture-based coursework. Comparison of scores for the American Chemical Society General Chemistry Exams, from this community college and at a national level, indicates active learning students perform equally well on chemistry standardized tests. In total, active learning classes were most beneficial to Hispanic students, and should be designed according to course level, be scaffolded to future coursework to maximize impact through development of STEM active learning pathways in which students are immersed in active learning classrooms continuously through undergraduate STEM academic coursework. 

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4. STEM Faculty’s Support of Togetherness during Mandated Separation: Accommodations, Caring, Crisis Management, and Powerlessness

   https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12090632  

   Thacker, Ian; Seyranian, Viviane; Madva, Alex; Beardsley, Paul (September 2022, Education Sciences)

   The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic initiated major disruptions to higher education systems. Physical spaces that previously supported interpersonal interaction and community were abruptly inactivated, and faculty largely took on the responsibility of accommodating classroom structures in rapidly changing situations. This study employed interviews to examine how undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) instructors adapted instruction to accommodate the mandated transition to virtual learning and how these accommodations supported or hindered community and belonging during the onset of the pandemic. Interviews with 25 STEM faculty at an undergraduate Hispanic Serving Institution revealed a wide range of accommodations they made to their courses and how they managed communication with students. Faculty strived to support student belonging with responses ranging from caring to crisis management, though some faculty expressed feelings of powerlessness when unable to accommodate certain challenges. The case of a responsive and flexible instructor is presented to highlight a productive response to a crisis. These retrospective findings point to strategies to support faculty teaching in virtual learning environments in the future; increasing opportunities for student–student and student–faculty interaction, supporting faculty in learning technologies that support these interactions and addressing faculty’s feelings of powerlessness. 

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5. Impact of Peer-Assisted Learning and Leadership Development on Undergraduate Students

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--41968  

   Fogarty, Julie; Altman, Robin; Lundmark, Jennifer (August 2022, ASEE Conferences)

   With college advisory boards and potential employers consistently voicing their desire for engineers and scientists who can communicate well, work effectively in teams, and independently problem-solve, the Colleges of Engineering & Computer Science (ECS) and Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) at Sacramento State University, a large, public, primarily undergraduate institution, have deployed two programs to explicitly address these skills for undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students. The goals of the NSF-funded Achieving STEM Persistence through Peer-Assisted Learning and Leadership Development (ASPIRE) project are to increase retention and decrease time to graduation for STEM students, as well as increase retention of women and underrepresented minorities (URM) in the STEM workforce by implementing evidence-based practices to promote student success during two critical transitions: 1) from lower-division to upper-division coursework in engineering; and 2) from upper-division coursework to an entry-level STEM career. ASPIRE aims to achieve these goals by: 1) adapting and implementing the NSM Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) program in gateway engineering courses; and 2) developing the Hornet Leadership Program which includes scaffolded opportunities for students to explore their leadership capacity and develop leadership skills. The main research questions for this study include: (1) Will the ECS PAL model and Hornet Leadership Program result in increased persistence and workforce readiness in STEM majors at a large, diverse university? (2) What attitude changes will this project have on students and faculty and the relationships between them? The first question is addressed through pre- and post-implementation student surveys and student course/GPA data. The second question is addressed through faculty surveys, faculty focus groups/interviews, and pre- and post-data from a faculty professional development workshop. In general, preliminary results from this study indicate the new ECS PAL program successfully attracts URM students and thus has the potential to support their persistence and STEM workforce readiness. Additionally, undergraduate students across both Colleges who participated in the inaugural Hornet Leadership Program gained non-technical skills and experiences directly linked to competitiveness and preparation for workforce entry and graduate programs. Finally, faculty surveys and the faculty professional development workshop indicate that faculty value student leadership development, but identify barriers to accomplishing this work. 

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