Levy Regan, Barnard Rachel A, Bamrah Manvir, Kale Ritika, Kaur Tavleen, Rose Peyton, Shakir Insiyah, Treger Milo, Masani Shahnaz
Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
Physiology Department, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
J Microbiol Biol Educ. 2025 Aug 21;26(2):e0004125. doi: 10.1128/jmbe.00041-25. Epub 2025 Jul 18.
Undergraduate learning assistants (LAs), as near-peer supports and educators who facilitate student-centered pedagogies, have the potential to transform STEM classrooms to be more equitable and just. However, LAs often receive little pedagogical training in equity and justice, especially training that frames racism and anti-racist work through a structural lens. Consequently, as they make sense of racial disparities in their disciplines and classrooms, LAs, like STEM faculty, draw on inaccurate color-evasive explanations instead of recognizing and challenging systemic barriers. This adversely impacts their equitable teaching practices, including their ability to notice and respond to racialized events and practices in their classes. By introducing LAs to frameworks of racial noticing and color-evasive racism, and by centering the experiences of marginalized students, our curriculum aims to provide LAs with tools to identify and challenge dominant narratives and racist events. It empowers LAs to view racialized social interactions not just as isolated events or the result of "a few bad actors," but as shaped by dominant societal narratives within a racially structured system. In doing so, it develops their ability to notice and challenge racialized events, making immediate and long-term changes to their teaching-developing their "racial noticing lens." We find that through this curriculum, LAs develop their critical consciousness, shifting from feeling overwhelmed and disengaged to grappling with tensions between their prior assumptions and new understandings of systemic inequities in STEM, and committing to transformative changes in their perspective and practices of equity. Thus, LAs begin their journeys as anti-racist STEM educators.
本科学习助理（LAs）作为近距离的同伴支持和教育者，促进以学生为中心的教学方法，有潜力将STEM课堂转变为更加公平和公正的环境。然而，学习助理在公平和正义方面通常很少接受教学培训，尤其是通过结构性视角来阐述种族主义和反种族主义工作的培训。因此，当他们试图理解自己学科和课堂中的种族差异时，学习助理和STEM教师一样，会采用不准确的回避肤色的解释，而不是认识到并挑战系统性障碍。这对他们的公平教学实践产生了不利影响，包括他们注意到并应对课堂中种族化事件和行为的能力。通过向学习助理介绍种族觉察和回避肤色的种族主义框架，并以边缘化学生的经历为中心，我们的课程旨在为学习助理提供工具，以识别和挑战主流叙事及种族主义事件。它使学习助理能够将种族化的社会互动不仅仅视为孤立事件或“几个不良行为者”的结果，而是看作由种族结构化系统中的主流社会叙事所塑造。这样做能培养他们注意到并挑战种族化事件的能力，对他们的教学做出即时和长期的改变——培养他们的“种族觉察视角”。我们发现，通过这门课程，学习助理培养了他们的批判意识，从感到不知所措和脱离状态转变为应对他们先前的假设与对STEM中系统性不平等的新理解之间的紧张关系，并致力于在公平视角和实践方面做出变革性改变。因此，学习助理开始了他们作为反种族主义STEM教育者的旅程。
