Change Strategies and Tools to Support STEM Faculty’s Enactment of Equitable, Student-Centered Instruction

(Caption: BETTER in STEM Cohort 1 Faculty at the Summer 2023 Workshop)

Introduction

There is a shortage of highly qualified STEM professionals in the United States. Preparing the next generation with the knowledge and skills to contribute to their STEM disciplines, workplaces, communities, and society are core responsibilities of undergraduate STEM education. Research has shown that minoritized students, as well as low-income and first-generation college students, benefit the most from asset-based and student-centered teaching practices,^{1, 2} yet they are the least likely to experience them in undergraduate STEM courses.^3-6 Thus, the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine concluded that if all higher education institutions supported STEM faculty members’ use of evidence-based instruction, there might not be shortages of highly qualified STEM professionals in the United States today or in the future.⁷

The NSF-funded project, Building Education Theory through Enacting Reforms in STEM (BETTER in STEM), employs a unique combination of research-based change strategies to support STEM faculty members’ use of equitable, student-centered instruction in undergraduate STEM courses. Our change strategies and tools, grounded in a novel instructional framework, are designed to maximize impacts and have broad application across STEM disciplines and institutions. Three different types of institutions partnered in this work to increase the applicability of the instructional framework, change processes, and corresponding tools to other institutions. The project includes a two-year community college (Whatcom Community College), a mid-size regional university (Western Washington University), and a doctoral-granting university that is the second largest Hispanic-serving institution in the country (University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley).

BETTER in STEM Change Strategies

Change targeting STEM departments requires bottom-up approaches focused on individual faculty and classrooms, as well as top-down approaches targeting departmental and institutional policies and practices. Bottom-up approaches alone are unlikely to change departmental goals, policies, and the overall ethos regarding powerful instructional strategies. At the same time, if departmental policies change without faculty buy-in and professional development, they will likely have little impact on faculty beliefs and instruction.^{3, 8-10} In their review of research on undergraduate STEM reforms, Henderson, Beach, and Finkelstein identified four categories of change strategies that address both individual and leadership/policy levels (see Figure 1).¹¹

Figure 1: BETTER in STEM Change Strategies for Each Change Category

Next, we describe how we developed and tested our tools and processes for each category of change during the first two years of BETTER in STEM.

Shared Vision Change Strategy: Collaborative development of a framework to operationalize equitable, student-centered undergraduate STEM instruction

Nobel laureate Carl Wieman concluded from his two decades of work on undergraduate STEM reform that the biggest barrier to faculty members’ use of evidence-based instruction is the lack of a shared framework within STEM departments to define, measure, and reward effective teaching.⁹ Very few undergraduate STEM departments have frameworks to operationalize student-centered instruction in clear, concise, and concrete terms.^{12, 13} Furthermore, AAAS notes that such frameworks should redefine equity and inclusion as key components of effective instruction.³ A shared framework that operationalizes evidence-based instruction helps STEM faculty identify instructional goals, analyze instruction, and identify areas for improvement. A framework also provides a shared language for departmental discussions about STEM instruction and reform and can clearly define effective instruction when hiring new faculty and for review, tenure, and promotion processes.

We developed the Equitable, Student-Centered Instructional Framework for Undergraduate STEM with an inter-institutional team of faculty and staff with expertise in equitable instruction and student-centered teaching. Team members compiled research to develop an initial draft of the framework and received feedback on drafts from the project’s leadership team, national advisory board, and external evaluators. The project’s research team conducted 90-minute cognitive interviews through Zoom with STEM faculty and students across our three institutions to identify unclear language and terminology within the framework. The researchers asked probing questions to understand how STEM instructors and students interpreted the indicators, specifically eliciting participants’ responses about the pedagogies and practices they felt comprised each indicator. The first BETTER in STEM faculty cohort included 40 STEM instructors knowledgeable in inclusive undergraduate STEM instruction. These faculty participants provided feedback to help determine the clarity of the framework’s pedagogies and practices, how the pedagogies differed based on their specific STEM disciplines, practices that were missing or irrelevant to their discipline, and resources that helped them translate the pedagogies into practice. Lastly, we presented drafts of the instructional framework at national conferences to obtain feedback from the broader STEM education community.

The instructional framework (included in the Resources section) contains 31 indicators that highlight research-based practices organized into the following four components:

1. Culture & Environment (C&E),
2. Curriculum & Content (C&C)
3. Discourse & Language (D&L), and
4. Assessment for Learning (AfL).

The framework integrates equitable, inclusive strategies with active, student-centered pedagogies and is applicable across all STEM disciplines. It is not a curriculum framework (a set of standards that specifies the content to be learned) or a lesson planning framework (what teachers use to organize and plan lessons). Instead, instructors use it as a guide for developing lessons and implementing curricula.

We have collected data each fall and spring term from faculty and students about the extent to which they implemented/experienced the framework’s pedagogies. Faculty participants used these data to guide their improvement efforts. Below, we present some direct quotes that illustrate faculty and student comments regarding the use of specific indicators in their classrooms.

• Indicator C&E 3: Students co-construct, discuss, adopt, and regularly revisit community norms for interactions, discussions, classroom and lab routines, and group roles.
  • Student: “My teacher did this really well. We looked at norms everyday and had a discussion if people were not following them and the community also got involved. One norm was not packing up two minutes early and if someone did this then classmates would point it out.”
  • Instructor: “Previously, I presented students with a list of guidelines for classroom interactions on the first day of class. In my class this summer, I used a norm-building activity in which students generated the class norms on the first day of class. In subsequent classes, students chose a class norm to focus on during that class session. At the end of each session, students completed a brief reflection on how well their team met that norm. I found this approach of student-generated norms to be more effective than teacher-mandated norms. I also used our campus’ student success dashboard to see if the reforms that I was using in my classes were successful in closing equity gaps. I learned that implementing student-centered approaches closed the equity gap between Historically Underserved Students of Color and White/Asian students in my classes.”
• Indicator C&E 6: Students develop a critical lens toward race, culture, and language to disrupt assumptions and structures that harm learning and belongingness within the classroom learning community.
  • Student: “I don’t think my teacher does this. Once they did a scientist spotlight. They were trying but it felt like they were trying too hard… it was superficial… and it was disconnected from what we were doing… it didn’t feel like a deep dive into diversity”.
• Indicator D&L 5: Students interact with and use diverse academic discourse, welcoming all forms of language and communication within the class discussions and materials.
  • Instructor: “I have a good grasp on what this is asking and I see this as having an enormous benefit to student learning. Having students’ language welcomed and not penalized. So many students have imposter syndrome…lots of students have low confidence- we need to cultivate that feeling of belongingness. These indicators are based within reality, and I see that I can always do more.”

Curriculum and Pedagogy Change Strategy: Professional development for STEM faculty

Barriers for faculty members to reform their instruction include a lack of knowledge and skills with evidence-based instructional strategies, concerns about students’ potential resistance to active learning strategies, and pressure to cover content.¹⁴ Improving undergraduate STEM teaching and learning requires job-embedded professional development (PD) that is intensive and prolonged over time.¹⁵ For two years (Summer 2022 – Spring 2024), Cohort 1 faculty participants spent three days each summer and two days each academic year collaborating to increase their knowledge and skills with pedagogies from the instructional framework.

“(At a BETTER in STEM workshop, I) looked over the survey results sent out to examine how my instruction contributed to student belonging. The main takeaway seemed to be that there are some low barrier strategies (i.e., learning student names) that go a long way to creating a sense of belonging for students. Also being open and honest (transparent) with students helps with their belonging.” – Cohort 1 STEM faculty participant

Reflective Teachers Change Strategy: Faculty collaborate within Instructional Change Teams

To improve the quality of implementation of equitable, student-centered pedagogies, STEM faculty need structured opportunities to practice new strategies with feedback from knowledgeable colleagues. Research has identified communities of practice, where faculty work together to improve their instruction, as one of the most significant drivers of change in classrooms.¹⁴ Peer observations, coaching, and feedback are specific collaborative approaches that can help STEM faculty examine and improve their instruction.¹¹ For two years, Cohort 1 faculty participants were compensated for three days each school year to collaborate within a 3-5 person “instructional change team” (ICT). Some of the ICTs were discipline-based, where all of the ICT members were from the same department, and some were interdisciplinary. ICT members met 2-4 times each term to talk about their instruction, conduct peer observations and feedback, and analyze student data to inform their instructional improvements. On the BETTER in STEM website are specific protocols the project developed to help faculty engage in peer observations and analyze student survey data about the extent to which students experienced, and benefited from, the pedagogies from the instructional framework.

“Since our previous (ICT) meeting, our team observed each other’s classes and learned a lot…My main takeaways were: 1) that instructors should watch each other teach more often, and 2) we learned at least as much from seeing what other instructors do than from hearing their feedback about our own classes.” – Cohort 1 STEM faculty participant

Policy Change Strategy: Supporting departmental conversations about change

Departmental reward systems send strong messages to STEM faculty about the importance of teaching relative to research and service responsibilities.^{3, 16-18} As the National Research Council noted, “If faculty members are to consider investing time in implementing new pedagogies, they must not feel that such time will be a negative factor in salary and advancement considerations.”¹ Moreover, in their research on faculty evaluation, Henderson, Turpen, Dancy, and Chapman state that review, tenure, and promotion policies typically emphasize teaching outcomes, which conflicts with research that describes effective teaching as a process. They argue that “instructors should be able to document that they are involved in an ongoing process of teaching improvement that includes the collection of evidence, reflection, and making changes”, and teaching portfolios should be evaluated “based not only on the outcomes measures, but also on the extent to which the instructor is involved in continuous improvement.”¹³

To promote and sustain a departmental culture that supports the use of evidence-based pedagogies, faculty within STEM departments must first have a shared vision and language about equitable, student-centered instruction. The majority of STEM faculty from our first cohort are continuing in new roles over the next two years as faculty leaders. In these roles, the faculty leaders will help facilitate conversations within their departments/institutions about how to support instructional changes aligned with the vision from the framework. Concurrently, the project will be working with a second cohort of 60 STEM faculty members across our three institutions to increase their knowledge and skills with the instructional framework’s strategies.

Once STEM departments have a shared vision for effective instruction and a critical mass of faculty working to make their instruction more equitable and student-centered, departments will be well positioned to examine and revise faculty review policies and practices to better support faculty members’ efforts to improve their instruction. The comments below illustrate the work of Cohort 1 faculty in facilitating conversations within their department to improve STEM instruction.

“Our ICT created a Google form to prompt department level thinking about what inclusive teaching practices folks are working on or would like to learn more about. This Friday we will facilitate a discussion at our department meeting about these ideas. We are trying to re-create a previous department culture of frequently talking about teaching.”

One week later: “The discussion we facilitated at a department meeting…went well. Folks were very engaged and there was good conversation and sharing of ideas. Some of the discussion themes: breaking down barriers to get students to come to office hours/ask for help, syllabus language and tone, getting students to buy-in to in-class group work, and how to make lab work more inclusive, particularly for neurodivergent students. This last one (raised by someone else) really resonated with me and some of the challenges I’ve had with students in class and lab this quarter.”

BETTER in STEM Tools

We created three tools to assist STEM faculty in identifying appropriate entry points into their instructional improvement work:

1) Equitable, Student-Centered Instructional Framework for Undergraduate STEM

The framework includes 31 indicators across the four components of Culture & Environment, Curriculum & Content, Discourse & Language, and Assessment for Learning. The indicators represent research-based classroom practices and pedagogies. The instructional framework meaningfully integrates the two often disparate fields of research on equitable and student-centered classroom pedagogies within each indicator and is applicable across all STEM disciplines.

2) Planning Considerations and Resources Documents

For each framework component, we developed a Planning Considerations and Resources document that shares specific pedagogies and practices to help STEM faculty teach in ways that address each indicator. The documents specify strategies, resources, and examples of the pedagogies in practice. Over the next two years, we will be creating a repository of videos from undergraduate STEM classrooms to further illustrate the indicators.

3) STEM Faculty and Undergraduate Student Surveys

We developed a STEM faculty self-assessment survey to help faculty reflect on their knowledge and use of the framework’s pedagogies. We also created an undergraduate student survey aligned to the framework indicators that faculty can administer to understand the extent to which students experienced the framework’s pedagogies and how the instruction benefited students’ learning and sense of belonging.

These three tools work in conjunction to help instructors improve their teaching in a data-driven way. Faculty members use their survey data to identify specific indicator areas where they would like to improve, then use the Planning Considerations documents to identify ways to improve in those areas. All resources are anchored in the Instructional Framework.

Conclusion

Top-down and bottom-up change strategies grounded in the BETTER in STEM instructional framework can help departments and faculty members create more equitable, student-centered classroom learning environments. STEM departments can use the instructional framework to provide a vision and language to foster conversations about evidence-based teaching and how to engage in reform work. Individual STEM instructors can use the BETTER in STEM tools and resources to create classrooms that support students’ learning and belongingness, especially historically marginalized students. And STEM colleagues can collaborate to support each other’s learning and enactment of evidence-based pedagogies. STEM professions and industries thrive when there is a diversity of perspectives to understand and address real-world issues. Consequently, STEM departments and instructors across the country must do a better job of creating equitable, student-centered classroom environments that support students’ learning and sense of belonging.

Information about the Partnering Institutions

Whatcom Community College (WCC) is a regionally and nationally accredited college in Bellingham, Washington that serves nearly 11,000 students annually, with over 300 international students from 25 countries.

Western Washington University (WWU) is a comprehensive, regional university located in Bellingham, Washington that enrolls approximately 15,000 undergraduate students. Approximately 28% of the student population identify as students of color, 23% are first generation college students, 20% are Pell-eligible, and 57% female.

The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), on the border with Mexico in South Texas, serves more than 32,000 students, > 90% being of Hispanic origin. It is the second largest federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution in the country, and many of UTRGV’s students are first generation college students from high poverty areas in the region spanning four counties.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the PIs and senior personnel of the BETTER in STEM project at Whatcom Community College (Tran Phung, Pat Burnett, and Xyan Neider), the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (Saraswathy Nair, Timothy Huber, and Alyssa Cavazos), and Western Washington University (Emily Borda, Shannon Warren, Jessica Cohen, Dustin Van Orman, Josie Melton, and Shevell Thibou). We would also like to acknowledge the invaluable support we have received from our Advisory Board members (Cynthia Bauerle, Charles Henderson, Okhee Lee, Heather Macdonald, Jenny McFarland, and Becky Wai-Ling Packard), and our external evaluators at Horizon Research Inc. (Kristen Malzahn, Eric Banilower, and Lauren Harper). We wouldn’t have a project if it weren’t for all of our wonderful faculty participants who helped us test and refine our processes and tools. Thanks to Justin Eriksen for his feedback on this article. And finally, this project wouldn’t be possible without the support from the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE-2111613, 2111610, and 2111417. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

BETTER in STEM Website