O'Leary Erin Sanders, Shapiro Casey, Toma Shannon, Sayson Hannah Whang, Levis-Fitzgerald Marc, Johnson Tracy, Sork Victoria L
Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences, Divisions of Life and Physical Sciences, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA USA.
Center for Educational Assessment, Center for the Advancement of Teaching, Division of Undergraduate Education, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA USA.
Int J STEM Educ. 2020;7(1):32. doi: 10.1186/s40594-020-00230-7. Epub 2020 Jul 1.
As higher education institutions strive to effectively support an increasingly diverse student body, they will be called upon to provide their faculty with tools to teach more inclusively, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms where recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups present long-standing challenges. Pedagogical training approaches to creating inclusive classrooms involve interventions that raise awareness of student and instructor social identities and explore barriers to learning, such as implicit bias, microaggressions, stereotype threat, and fixed mindset. Such efforts should focus on embracing diversity as an asset leveraged to benefit all students in their learning. In this paper, we describe the impact of multiday, off-campus immersion workshops designed to impart faculty with these tools. Based on analysis of workshop participant data, we report the resulting changes in faculty knowledge of factors affecting classroom climate and student success in STEM, attitudes about students, and motivation to adopt new teaching practices aimed at fostering equitable and culturally responsive learning environments.
Key findings indicate that attendees (1) increased their knowledge of social identities and the barriers to learning in STEM classrooms, particularly those faced by students from underrepresented groups in STEM or socioeconomically challenged backgrounds; (2) changed their attitudes about students' abilities as science majors, shifting away from a fixed-mindset perspective in which characteristics, such as intelligence, are perceived as innate and unalterable; and (3) modified their teaching approaches to promote inclusivity and cultural responsiveness.
Faculty members, who are linchpins in the evolution of college classrooms into settings that provide students with equitable opportunities to succeed academically in STEM, can benefit from participating in immersion workshops structured to support their awareness of issues affecting classroom culture related to race/ethnicity, LGBTQ status, religious affiliation, ability, socioeconomic status, and other social identities that contribute to disparities in STEM achievement and persistence.
随着高等教育机构努力有效支持日益多样化的学生群体，它们将被要求为教师提供更具包容性教学的工具，特别是在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）课堂上，招收和留住代表性不足和处境不利群体的学生面临长期挑战。创建包容性课堂的教学培训方法涉及提高对学生和教师社会身份的认识以及探索学习障碍的干预措施，如隐性偏见、微侵犯、刻板印象威胁和固定型思维模式。这些努力应侧重于将多样性视为一种资产，用以促进所有学生的学习。在本文中，我们描述了旨在为教师传授这些工具的多日校外沉浸式工作坊的影响。基于对工作坊参与者数据的分析，我们报告了教师在影响课堂氛围和学生在STEM领域取得成功的因素方面的知识变化、对学生的态度以及采用旨在营造公平和具有文化响应性学习环境的新教学实践的动机。
主要研究结果表明，参与者（1）增加了对社会身份以及STEM课堂学习障碍的了解，尤其是那些来自STEM领域代表性不足群体或社会经济背景具有挑战性的学生所面临的障碍；（2）改变了他们对学生作为科学专业学生能力的态度，从认为智力等特征是天生且不可改变的固定型思维模式转变；（3）调整了他们的教学方法以促进包容性和文化响应性。
教师是将大学课堂转变为为学生提供在STEM领域学业上公平成功机会的关键人物，参加旨在支持他们认识到影响与种族/民族、LGBTQ身份、宗教信仰、能力、社会经济地位以及其他导致STEM成就和持续性差异的社会身份相关的课堂文化问题的沉浸式工作坊会使他们受益。
