About

Perhaps one of the greatest grand challenges to tackle is the lack of diversity among STEM teachers across the country. The diversity gap that exists in K-12 classrooms has no signs of diminishing unless we do something very different, at scale. Without this change, we are reinforcing an education structure that is not serving all students and has huge impacts on the diversity of all other sectors of our workforce.

The Diversifying STEM Teacher Pipeline project team has come together over the course of six months to work together on a literature review, survey the field, and profile projects and organizations willing to share their strategies to support a more diversified STEM teacher workforce. The project team consists of six team members that represent different educator stakeholders: Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, The National Center for Teacher Residencies, The teaching Channel, University of California Santa Barbara, University System of Maryland, and Western Governors University.

Putting Diversity at the Forefront of the STEM Teacher Pipeline

In addition to supporting the mission of reaching 100Kin10's goal to recruit and retain 100,000 new STEM teachers by 2021, who is entering the STEM teacher workforce is incredibly important. 100Kin10 supported the Diversifying the STEM Teacher Pipeline project team to learn more about the strategies others across the country are using to recruit and retain pre-service teachers from groups historically underrepresented in K-12 STEM classrooms.

This work started with an exhaustive literature review to learn more about what is being done in the field. The research clearly showed that there are gaps in information:

• Programs are either focusing on recruiting more STEM teachers or on recruiting a more diverse teacher workforce but few focused explicitly on recruiting a more diverse STEM teacher workforce.
• Programs and projects that have publishable results do not discuss the strategies they used to increase recruitment and/or retention of pre-service teachers.
• There is far more being done in this space than what has been published as a research-based program with empirical evidence to support findings.

Putting Solutions in the Hands of Solution Seekers

This project team purposefully decided that the value of its work is to create one place for those interested in supporting STEM teacher diversity to learn about strategies being used to recruit and retain STEM teachers from underrepresented backgrounds and provide a way to connect with those using them.

The information on this site is grounded in the literature that is readily available and expanded to include information that programs across the country freely shared with the project team. As a user of this information, please be aware that this information has not been validated and often has not been externally evaluated by a third party. This is meant to be a resource to provide programs with ideas and connect people in the community to follow up and learn more.