scholarly journals Implementing inclusive practices in an active learning STEM classroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. S. Johnson

What do you bring to a conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion? While acknowledging this conversation is important, many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faculty shy away from engaging these topics. STEM educators often hesitate to participate in these discussions due to their self-perceived lack of knowledge or training. However, as institutions welcome ever-diversifying student populations, STEM faculty must consider how their teaching and mentoring approaches affect their students. During the 2018 American Physiological Society (APS) Institute for Teaching and Learning, STEM faculty and administrators engaged in conversations to better understand how their own approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion affect the success of their students. During my plenary workshop, “Inclusive Practices for Diverse Student Populations,” participants investigated their own perspectives and practices. They also discussed approaches to implementing inclusive practices that complement active pedagogical best practices. In an attempt to replicate this workshop environment, I ask you to engage with an interactive set of exercises to investigate your own perspective on the topics of diversity, inclusion, and equity. After you consider your own approaches to these topics, I provide practical examples of inclusive practices that align or enhance active leaning pedagogy. By building confidence, providing support, and promoting various pathways to success, inclusive practices enhance student learning and decrease social disparities in STEM education, ultimately supporting STEM innovation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. S. Johnson ◽  
Amy Briggs ◽  
Christine Hawn ◽  
Namoonga Mantina ◽  
Brett C. Woods

As student populations become more diverse, it is essential for educators, administrators, and institutions to implement practices that ensure the success of all students. This is particularly true in the sciences, as students from traditionally underrepresented populations in STEM compose an increasingly greater proportion of the national student demographic. The Teaching Section of the American Physiological Society sponsored a symposium, “Inclusive Practices for Diverse Student Populations,” at 2017 Experimental Biology in Chicago, IL, introducing practices that promote inclusion in diverse student populations in STEM. The symposium began with an introduction to quantitative and qualitative assessment strategies of equity and inclusion. The second half of the symposium discussed structural bias and effective inclusive practices.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Jeff D. Borden

Education 3.0 is the confluence of known, effective throughputs in teaching and learning due to changed inputs and desired changes to output across higher education. From increasingly diverse student populations to the need for critical thinking by all, education has fundamentally changed. Practitioners must leverage technologies to scale learning and meet demands by families for more flexible, lifelong learning options. Gone are the days when student bodies had more on-campus, residential, homogeneity, as well as small cohorts from selective admissions. Such changes now require architects of learning to consider the efficacy of various teaching and assessment methods in promoting actual learning versus short-term memorization, as well as how to use technology to do all of this at scale. From neuroscience to learning psychology to education technology, there is an impressive body of research around authentic learning, yet most faculty are largely unaware of this scholarship, seeing instruction dominated by tradition rather than effectiveness.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chelsea E. Noble ◽  
Marilyn J. Amey ◽  
Luis A. Colón ◽  
Jacqueline Conroy ◽  
Anna De Cheke Qualls ◽  
...  

In 2016, 10 universities launched a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) aimed at increasing the number of scholars from Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) populations entering science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty careers. NICs bring together stakeholders focused on a common goal to accelerate innovation through structured, ongoing intervention development, implementation, and refinement. We theorized a NIC organizational structure would aid understandings of a complex problem in different contexts and accelerate opportunities to develop and improve interventions to address the problem. A distinctive feature of this NIC is its diverse institutional composition of public and private, predominantly white institutions, a historically Black university, a Hispanic-serving institution, and land grant institutions located across eight states and Washington, DC, United States. NIC members hold different positions within their institutions and have access to varied levers of change. Among the many lessons learned through this community case study, analyzing and addressing failed strategies is as equally important to a healthy NIC as is sharing learning from successful interventions. We initially relied on pre-existing relationships and assumptions about how we would work together, rather than making explicit how the NIC would develop, establish norms, understand common processes, and manage changing relationships. We had varied understandings of the depth of campus differences, sometimes resulting in frustrations about the disparate progress on goals. NIC structures require significant engagement with the group, often more intensive than traditional multi-institution organizational structures. They require time to develop and ongoing maintenance in order to advance the work. We continue to reevaluate our model for leadership, climate, diversity, conflict resolution, engagement, decision-making, roles, and data, leading to increased investment in the success of all NIC institutions. Our NIC has evolved from the traditional NIC model to become the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) AGEP NIC model with five key characteristics: (1) A well-specified aim, (2) An understanding of systems, including a variety of contexts and different organizations, (3) A culture and practice of shared leadership and inclusivity, (4) The use of data reflecting different institutional contexts, and (5) The ability to accelerate infrastructure and interventions. We conclude with recommendations for those considering developing a NIC to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.


Author(s):  
Yeping Li ◽  
Alan H. Schoenfeld

AbstractMathematics is fundamental for many professions, especially science, technology, and engineering. Yet, mathematics is often perceived as difficult and many students leave disciplines in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as a result, closing doors to scientific, engineering, and technological careers. In this editorial, we argue that how mathematics is traditionally viewed as “given” or “fixed” for students’ expected acquisition alienates many students and needs to be problematized. We propose an alternative approach to changes in mathematics education and show how the alternative also applies to STEM education.


2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Glen Postle ◽  
Andrew Sturman

In this paper the authors trace the development of equity within the Australian higher education context over the latter part of the last century. In particular they focus on the ways different perspectives (liberalist-individualist and social democratic) have shaped what has been a dramatic increase in the number and diversity of students accessing higher education in Australia. The adoption of a specific perspective has influenced the formation of policies concerning equity and consequently the way universities have responded to the pressures to accept more and different students. These responses are captured under two main headings – ‘restructuring the entry into higher education’ and ‘changing the curriculum within higher education’. Several examples of current programs and procedures based upon these are explained. The paper concludes with the identification of three ‘dilemmas' which have emerged as a result of the development and implementation of equity processes and procedures in higher education in Australia. These are: (a) While there has been an increase in the number and range of students accessing higher education, this has been accompanied by a financial cost to the more disadvantaged students, a cost which has the potential to exacerbate equity principles. (b) For one of the first times in the history of higher education, a focus is being placed on its teaching and learning functions, as opposed to its research functions. The problem is that those universities that have been obliged to broaden their base radically have also been obliged to review their teaching and learning practices without any budgetary compensation. (c) A third consequence of these changes relates to the life of a traditional academic. Universities that have been at the forefront of ‘changing their curriculum’ to cope with more diverse student groups (open and distance learning) have seen the loss of ‘lecturer autonomy’ as they work more as members of teams and less as individuals.


2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-281
Author(s):  
D. Bradford Marshall

Judith Rosenthal has brought together a wide variety of articles on second language (L2) teaching and learning that will surely interest foreign language (FL) educators in U.S. universities who are struggling to increase or maintain enrollment in their courses or who are seeking new ideas to meet the needs and demands of an increasingly diverse student population. Rather than encourage individual language departments to continue their separate battles for survival, Rosenthal hopes to enhance the “integration” of FL programs in order “to better promote proficiency in more than one language” (p. 353). This volume clearly illustrates how teachers of various languages can collaborate and share experiences in order to find solutions to what are often very similar problems.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-12
Author(s):  
Anna Bargagliotti ◽  
Dorothea Herreiner ◽  
Jefrey A. Phillips

The April 2017 National Science Foundation-funded Breaking the Boundaries in STEM Education conference brought together Southern California science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty to explore equity, problem-solving, and computing in an interdisciplinary manner. Two main research questions guided the overall scope of the conference: (1) What are the common threads across disciplines to approach the teaching and learning of skills that are relevant in STEM? (2) What are the challenges and barriers that need to be overcome in order to foster collaboration across disciplines to impact the teaching and learning of skills relevant in STEM? We describe the background of the conference and provide an overview of the questions addressed.


MADRASAH ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Agus Mukti Wibowo

Model, strategy or approach, which applied in teaching, can influence the process of learning. It assumed that the right approach can increase the ability of students in understanding the concepts which are studied. Generally, the teaching in MI has different characteristic from the elementary school. Creativity or modification model approaches needed to apply the teaching and learning of science in MI. One of the applicable approaches in science teaching, which is appropriate with MI characteristic, is STS. The implementation of STS approach has the opportunity to bring the Islamic teachings such as moral-ethic.<br />Keyword: Approach, concept, STS<br /><br />


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Savage ◽  
◽  
Jillian Healy ◽  

In Australia, a significant number of students enrol in first-year university biology without the benefit of high school biology. In order to help students support each other, the authors of this paper (a central unit academic developer and a biology coordinator of first-year biology) created a classroom activity that facilitated the distribution of the more experienced students of biology throughout the practical work groups. An important feature of this creative design for forming groups, called the GLO Activity in this paper, was the embedding of two of the University’s key teaching and learning priorities within the activity. These were the University’s eight graduate learning outcomes (GLOs) and, inclusive education practice. We discuss creative pedagogies in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and their link to supporting students in their first year of university study. We explain our scholarly thinking behind the GLO Activity and evaluate its impact. Finally, we reflect on how we, the educators, found satisfaction in thinking deeply to create a new learning structure for a biology practical class that solved one teaching challenge but also met a number of the University’s curriculum principles.


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