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Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) seeks to improve equity in instruction and leverage students’ experiences by promoting academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness. We examine instructors’ perceptions of student identity to understand the ways undergraduate mathematics instructors are enacting or experiencing barriers to enacting CRP. Interviews with ten mathematics faculty at Hispanic-serving institutions identified two potential barriers to enacting CRP: first, instructors’ hesitance to communicate about student identity, especially with respect to race and gender; and second, instructors holding epistemologies that mathematics is culture-free. Despite these barriers, almost all interviewees implemented the academic success tenet of CRP. These barriers may prevent instruction around cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness, which are the two tenets that most capitalize on students’ informal knowledge, identities, and cultural experiences. Changing discourse by taking more risks in conversation and inviting a more diverse range of people to the undergraduate mathematics community are potential ways to address these barriers.

 

We investigated the intersectional nature of race/racism and gender/sexism in broad scale inequities in physics student learning using a critical quantitative intersectionality. To provide transparency and create a nuanced picture of learning, we problematized the measurement of equity by using two competing operationalizations of equity:Equity of IndividualityandEquality of Learning. These two models led to conflicting conclusions. The analyses used hierarchical linear models to examine student's conceptual learning as measured by gains in scores on research‐based assessments administered as pretests and posttests. The data came from the Learning About STEM Student Outcomes' (LASSO) national database and included data from 13,857 students in 187 first‐semester college physics courses. Findings showed differences in student gains across gender and race. Large gender differences existed for White and Hispanic students but not for Asian, Black, and Pacific Islander students. The models predicted larger gains for students in collaborative learning than in lecture‐based courses. The Equity of Individuality operationalization indicated that collaborative instruction improved equity because all groups learned more with collaborative learning. The Equality of Learning operationalization indicated that collaborative instruction did not improve equity because differences between groups were unaffected. We discuss the implications of these mixed findings and identify areas for future research using critical quantitative perspectives in education research.

 

A common challenge in developmental research is the amount of incomplete and missing data that occurs from respondents failing to complete tasks or questionnaires, as well as from disengaging from the study (i.e., attrition). This missingness can lead to biases in parameter estimates and, hence, in the interpretation of findings. These biases can be addressed through statistical techniques that adjust for missing data, such as multiple imputation. Although multiple imputation is highly effective, it has not been widely adopted by developmental scientists given barriers such as lack of training or misconceptions about imputation methods. Utilizing default methods within statistical software programs like listwise deletion is common but may introduce additional bias. This manuscript is intended to provide practical guidelines for developmental researchers to follow when examining their data for missingness, making decisions about how to handle that missingness and reporting the extent of missing data biases and specific multiple imputation procedures in publications. 

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. 

Research-based assessments (RBAs) measure how well a course achieves discipline-specific outcomes. Educators can use outcomes from RBAs to guide instructional choices and to request resources to implement and sustain instructional transformations. One challenge for using RBAs, however, is a lack of comparative data, particularly given the skew in the research literature toward calculus-based courses at highly selective institutions. In this article, we provide a large-scale dataset and several tools educators in introductory physics courses can use to inform how well their courses foster student conceptual understanding of Newtonian physics. The supplemental materials include this dataset and these tools. Educators and administrators will often target courses with high drop, withdrawal, and failure rates for transformations to student-centered instructional strategies. RBAs and the comparative tools presented herein allow educators to address critiques that the course transformations made the courses “easier” by showing that the transformed course supported physics learning compared to similar courses at other institutions. Educators can also use the tools to track course efficacy over time. 

Researchers often frame quantitative research as objective, but every step in data collection and analysis can bias findings in often unexamined ways. In this investigation, we examined how the process of selecting variables to include in regression models (model specification) can bias findings about inequities in science and math student outcomes. We identified the four most commonly used methods for model specification in discipline-based education research about equity: a priori, statistical significance, variance explained, and information criterion. Using a quantitative critical perspective that blends statistical theory with critical theory, we reanalyzed the data from a prior publication (Van Dusen & Nissen, 2020) using each of the four methods and compared the findings from each. We concluded that using information criterion produced models that best aligned with our quantitative critical perspective’s emphasis on intersectionality and models with more accurate coefficients and uncertainties. Based on these findings, we recommend researchers use information criterion for specifying models about inequities in STEM student outcomes. 

The American Physical Society calls on its members to improve the diversity of physics by supporting an inclusive culture that encourages women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color to become physicists. Introductory physics courses provide opportunities for recruiting and retaining diverse students or enacting policies and cultural practices that disproportionately harm students from minoritized groups. Introductory calculus-based electricity and magnetism courses have received far less attention from researchers than introductory mechanics courses. To better understand the role introductory electricity and magnetism courses play in the lack of diversity in physics, we investigated the intersecting relationships between racism and sexism in inequities in student conceptual knowledge using a quantitative critical framework. The analyses used Bayesian hierarchical linear models to examine students' conceptual knowledge as measured by the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism. The data came from the LASSO database and included 3,686 students from 83 calculus-based courses at 16 institutions. The model indicated society owed educational debts in conceptual knowledge due to racism, sexism, or both to Black, Hispanic, Asian, and White Hispanic students and White women. Of these groups, society owed the largest educational debts to Black students. The courses, of which almost all used collaborative instruction (81 of 83) supported by learning assistants (66 of 83), added to the educational debts owed to Black students, maintained the debts owed to Hispanic and White Hispanic students and White women, and mitigated the debts owed to Asian students. 

Education researchers often compare performance across race and gender on research-based assessments of physics knowledge to investigate the impacts of racism and sexism on physics student learning. These investigations' claims rely on research-based assessments providing reliable, unbiased measures of student knowledge across social identity groups. We used classical test theory and differential item functioning (DIF) analysis to examine whether the items on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) provided unbiased data across social identifiers for race, gender, and their intersections. The data was accessed through the Learning About STEM Student Outcomes platform and included responses from 4,848 students posttests in 152 calculus-based introductory physics courses from 16 institutions. The results indicated that the majority of items (22) on the FCI were biased towards a group. These results point to the need for instrument validation to account for item bias and the identification or development of fair research-based assessments. 

The American Chemical Society holds supporting diverse student populations engaging in chemistry as a core value. We analyzed chemical concept inventory scores from 4,612 students across 12 institutions to determine what inequities in content knowledge existed before and after introductory college chemistry courses. We interpreted our findings from a Quantitative Critical (QuantCrit) perspective that framed inequities as educational debts that society owed students due to racism, sexism, or both. Results showed that society owed women and Black men large educational debts before and after instruction. Society’s educational debts before instruction were large enough that women and Black men’s average scores were lower than White men’s average pretest scores even after instruction. Society would have to provide opportunities equivalent to taking the course up to two and a half times to repay the largest educational debts. These findings show the scale of the inequities in the science education systems and highlight the need for reallocating resources and opportunities throughout the K-16 education system to mitigate, prevent, and repay society’s educational debts from sexism and racism.