STEM for Equity Literature Review

STEM for Equity:

Methods of teaching and learning to encourage dialogues in diversity

A literature review

Amanda Clapp

Western Carolina University

EDRS 602-53: Methods of Education Research

Dr. Kristy Doss

April 14, 2020

Introduction

In every school, in every class in the United States, inequity exists. Students have their own set of circumstances they bring with them to the classroom, and they act and learn using those circumstances as their foundation. I posit that the teacher’s role in any classroom is to provide both opportunity and access to the curriculum for every student. In addition to “leveling the playing field,” teachers must also provide students the opportunity to recognize and eliminate their cultural bias in order to ensure equity in the next generations of American citizens. STEM and science class are not apart from social justice and equitable teaching; in fact, they may offer tools to begin a dialogue about equity in the classroom. This paper proposes that STEM classes can provide access and opportunity in two ways: First, immediate equity for students through teacher practice, and second, development of awareness of inequity through discussion in science class. I discuss the ways this equitable facilitation can increase discussion, and the possible impacts of integrating social justice and STEM instruction through curriculum development.

Immediate Equity Through Teacher Practice

As facilitators of learning communities, teachers have the tools to develop positive group norms and to challenge their students. This opportunity is also an obligation to provide equitable curriculum and social-emotional support for students in their classes. There are a few ways teachers can prepare to teach for equity, and there are a few ways they can engage students of color, minority groups, and diverse students in active STEM learning.

Preparing to teach for Equity

One issue in teaching diversity in science class is teacher preparation. As is well documented, a predominantly white, middle-class, female teaching cohort is engaging with students who are much more diverse. Teacher preparation programs can help teachers anticipate the needs of diverse students, identify their own biases, and learn strategies to include diverse students in the classroom conversation. Most research thus far has addressed immersion and exposure to multicultural situations in the undergraduate classroom, including Bryan and Atwater (2002). They showed preservice teachers need a forum in their training to pursue their prejudices by experiencing multicultural situations and working through their experiences to improve their sensitivity to students’ differences. Another example of improving the capacity to teach diverse students effectively includes improving representation in teacher preparation programs. This diverse representation of scientists in classes increases capacity to include and discuss diversity for beginning teachers (Pringle & McLaughlin, 2014).

How can teachers encourage student engagement in STEM?

There is a growing body of research that investigates the engagement of diverse students in STEM disciplines, but there are few large studies that discuss best practices outside experimental or theoretical papers. These small sample size projects have shown us some very effective techniques that work for specific groups of students. For instance, Shea and Sandoval (2019) investigated an afterschool STEM program that provided a safe community and positive reinforcement for LatinX students. Having the positive relationship with Latinx science role models incorporated content and ideology for students. Ash and Wiggan (2018) summarize inclusive science pedagogy and propose critical post-modern science pedagogy. While it is designed to be an overarching pedagogical paradigm, it falls short in its practical application in classrooms.

Development of Social Justice Dialogue through Science Curriculum

If students do not interact with people who are different from them, they are more likely to see differences between groups of people and to develop prejudice based on their misconceptions (Emmons & Kelemen, 2015). This lack of understanding of other people can be based on many factors, but one problem is the misconception that races of people are based on significant genetic differences instead of a wide variation of physical characteristics that have developed in response to our environment (Ackermann et. al., 1996; Jablonski & Chaplin, 2010). This idea that people are different because their genes are extremely different from other groups is called biological or genetic essentialism (Smedley & Smedley, 2005). There are a number of studies that demonstrate the correlation between genetic essentialism and racism (Byrd & Ray, 2015; Kaplan & Winther, 2013; and Morin‐Chassé et al., 2017). These essentialist conceptions and the resulting discrimination are important to address and to change. In order to change these misconceptions, direct instruction in human diversity is a key factor. A curriculum that encourages discussion about social justice is vital to current STEM instruction.

Genetic Essentialism and its effects

If Americans don’t learn about human diversity in terms of its complex genetics and often superficial differences, they can understand race and other socially constructed groups as based on science. This perpetuates stereotypes and misconceptions between groups, and can inflate racist tendencies. Jayaratne et. al. (2006) used a telephone survey sample to determine that most Americans endorse genetic lay theory to explain perceived race differences and differences in sexual orientation. The greater a person’s genetic lay theory endorsement, the greater the prejudice against blacks, less against gays. Social group perception is contextual; white people who subscribe to this genetic lay theory assume black permanent inferiority, whereas they lessen prejudice against gays because "they can't help it." If Americans can learn about people who look different from each other and discuss their differences with each other and with scientists, those negative effects can be mitigated. Emerson, Kimbro, & Yancey (2002) showed the importance of contact theory in minimizing racist ideation; the more interracial contact children had, the more racially diverse their social groups were as adults. When people are exposed to an answer for their prejudice that seems scientific, they use it- either consciously or unconsciously. For instance, Williams and Eberhardt (2008) showed that biological race conception can influence responses to group- level inequities i.e., racism. In addition, those chronic race conceptions lessen interest in reaching outside one’s group for social or work experiences. These examples show a need to start early with education about race as a social construct, not a biological one. However, addressing human diversity in elementary or middle school classrooms is not easy, as our genetics and our histories are complicated.

Teaching Diversity through a STEM Lens

Teaching with Purpose

Teaching issues that lie in our ideologies, our family vocabulary, and our history, can be fraught with anxiety for students and for teachers. Aikenhead and Jegede (1999) describe learning new science as a cultural border crossing. They suggest collateral learning may be a bridge for the cognitive disconnect students experience when learning science concepts that refute home-based beliefs. Addressing this teaching and learning collaterally, acknowledging both the beliefs and the science, may allow us to facilitate social change as understanding of diversity takes root. Teachers must be purposeful in designing the teaching; Chinn and Malhotra (2002) demonstrate that inquiry learning, which is prevalent in STEM education, often relies on observations. However, students are often not able to change paradigms based on their observations of phenomena; it requires multiple exposures and a mixture of teaching methods to shift paradigms. Another part of diligent preparation should be curriculum critique. Donovan (2014, 2016) showed significant differences in race conception between students using different curricula to learn genetics. In 2014, he suggested that textbook bias can influence essentialist ideas of race in students. In 2016, a deeper exploration showed the impact of different curricula on racist ideation in high schoolers, and showed an attitude change in response to unbiased curriculum. There are two components of the middle school curriculum that would allow students an opportunity to engage with curricular materials that were unbiased and shift paradigms using collateral teaching and learning; human genetics and evolution.

Teaching human genetics

Often in the middle school classroom, we begin with Mendel and his pea plants. These mendelian traits students begin to use are either present or absent, and that is the extent of learning and understanding. To teach with purpose, and to address the misconception that race is purely biological, it may be more useful do develop curriculum in a different way. Human diversity is a spectrum along which individuals fall depending on the interactions between tens of thousands of genes, with unique physical features arising based on those interactions. The complexity cannot be summarized using Mendelian genetics. In broader conversations between geneticists and science communicators, there has also been a push to take any talk of race out of human genetics. Yudell et al. (2016) argue that we should not use race as a variable in genetic research. Since the human genome project mapped all the human genes, some uses of race have increased even without evidence. It's a social construct, not a taxonomic one. Hubbard (2017) showed that with only two exposures to biologically sound content on human diversity, high school students could explain what was wrong with the “biological race concept.” This implies the need for some good curriculum, but perhaps not a significant shift in pedagogy.

Some strides have been made recently to address racism and human diversity curriculum in science class. Dougherty (2009) argues that students need exposure to continuous variation and natural selection integrated with genetics to avoid the biological determinism concept. They offer a curriculum that starts with continuous traits and natural selection before introducing Mendelian genetics. Beckwith et. al (2017) designed a series of lessons for practical application in biology classrooms designed to help students recognize misunderstandings about the relationship between DNA and race, describe how DNA testing services assign geographic ancestry, explain how scientific findings have been used historically to promote institutionalized racism and the role personal biases can play in science, identify situations in their own life that have affected their understanding of genetics and race, and discuss the potential consequences of the racialization of medicine as well as other fallacies about the connection of science and race. Donovan et. al (2019) developed an instrument to measure racial bias before and after genetics instruction. They show that students’ racial prejudice is based on multiple sources, but teaching genetic variation can lessen bias.

Teaching evolution

Discussing evolution in terms of natural selection is often simple in the middle school classroom. To teach race and racism with purpose, however, teachers should also discuss human diversity as a result of natural selection. One factor of “race,” skin color is an evolutionary phenomenon that humans have carried in response to sunlight (Jablonski & Chaplin 2010). Some research has looked into the instruction and acceptance of evolution in education, and it can inform the social justice conversation in two ways. First, discussing evolution in terms of human adaptation requires best practices in pedagogy, and second the paradigm shifts of students in evolution lessons could be equated to the paradigm shifts of students toward out groups in social justice lessons about human diversity. In Sinatra et. al.’s 2003 study with undergraduates, they found a positive relationship between understanding and acceptance of photosynthesis, but almost no correlation between the understanding and acceptance of evolution. This implies that students’ home beliefs are factors in learning and understanding. Heddy & Sinatra (2013) show that transformative learning about evolution significantly influences the feelings of students. After they taught evolution lessons in a transformative experiential learning, the post test showed much more positive conceptions of evolution than the control group. This purposeful teaching is relevant in terms of developing students’ scientific understanding relative to their learned cultural understandings.

Social Justice Discussion in the STEM Classroom

This biological essentialist concept of race, which is held by adults and children in America, impacts the equity and experiences of all communities, including school communities. Lynch et. al. (2008) discuss the negative impact of the belief that race is genetically based. They suggest that students require multiple exposures to genetics lessons that explain human diversity. Aboud and Fenwick (1999) show that peers and adults may have a positive effect on racial attitudes of students when talk is explicit and tailored to the listener. Simply expressing positive attitudes may not be sufficient for changing paradigms; it is important to meet two criteria. First, we must identify information that is known to reduce prejudice and second, it must fit or be just beyond the cognitive capabilities of the student. Szostkowski & Upadhyay (2019) show that teachers have the responsibility to teach equity in science, not rules. They suggest the use of case studies for discussion in class to investigate the intersection of social justice and collective morality. The fact that people are treated with prejudice, or do not have access, based on a scientific misconception is deplorable. The way to social justice is through scientific understanding of human diversity coupled with culturally relevant pedagogy in science class.

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