Teaching Interventions

Recommended Interventions to Decrease the Gender Gap

The Current State of Teaching:

Teachers in the United States are far too undervalued and unappreciated, so much so that teachers are leaving the field in search of more financial and emotionally supportive careers. Currently, there is a national shortage of STEM educators. Teaching positions are opening up more than they are being replenished (Edelman). Kathy Chen, executive director of Worcester Polytechnic Institute STEM Education Center, stated that “The prevalent shortage of STEM teachers in K-12 schools is exacerbated in high-need districts that have also endured systemic racism and underfunding” in a news article released in January of 2021 (“Worcester Polytechnic Institute Receives Grant to Help Fill Demand for STEM Teachers in High-Need School Districts”). Teachers have a significant impact on students’ well-being, success, and motivation. Teachers are responsible for educating the next generation. Teaching is the one profession that creates all others.

Teachers are amazing. This is why before diving deeper into a critical analysis of teacher interventions and styles of teaching, we would like to acknowledge that the work of teachers is essential toward societal and personal student development. This work is not aimed at criticizing teachers for their work or style. Our goal is to shed light on how teachers in the US can adopt new practices to create more diverse, inclusive, and equitable learning environments. The works of a teacher are never complete. Learning never ends for the career of teachers. One can always learn, improve, and become a better version of themselves today than yesterday. To become better educators, we must acknowledge our imperfect teaching styles that result in our students feeling excluded, insufficient, and unsuccessful. In STEM, our responsibility is to support, guide, and inspire all students on their education journey. As teachers, we can deconstruct barriers, build paths to opportunity, and motivate students to pursue personal enlightenment.

Biden wants to fix the nation's teacher shortage. Educators say the problem is worsening.President Joe Biden's American Families Plan includes $9 billion to address the shortage, providing funding to train, equip and diversify the nation’s teachers.

Note: The article above informs readers about the current national teacher shortage. The teacher shortage crisis is worsening, especially in STEM fields. President Joe Biden has created a plan to increase teacher retention and recruitment, titled the American Families Plan. The project details increasing funding for teacher preparation programs that focus on special education, multilingual, and STEM.

Acknowledging Our Biases:

"Educators are biased. We all have implicant biases. Implicit biases are latently learned through our upbringing based on our cultural and societal surroundings, independent experiences, and group experiences. It is also important to note that these biases are generationally passed down via storytelling. Humans learn not only through direct experiences but also from second-hand situational accounts. Implicit biases are autonomic and engraved in our deep consciousness. As educators, many of us attend diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops to increase our cultural and moral awareness; however, we are still by-products of our environment. Attending workshops and seminars is a great start, but it is not enough. Whenever we step into the classroom, we need to be actively engaged in our lesson and students and our language in action" (Pacheco)

"Teachers are not the center of knowledge, but we set the stage. We all need to be comfortable acknowledging that we all have biases and so do our classrooms. As educators, we have biases that we assign to our students. Acknowledging our faults is the first step towards self-awareness and making ourselves mentally, cognitively, and emotionally available to meet our students' diverse needs. When we step into the classroom, we assign biases to our students, resulting in intellectual marginalization embedded in gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual identity. As teachers, we come into the classroom with our cultural stereotypes. These biases and stereotypes then become entrenched in our student's self-narrative. These stereotypes incite a cycle that creates false narratives that become intertwined with student identities, self-perceptions, and presumed capabilities (Morrell & Parker, 2013). Thus, ultimately resulting in many minority students believing that they are incompatible at becoming successful in STEM" (Pacheco).

Teachers want what is best for their students. We do not want students to feel robbed of successful opportunities, acceptance, and support. We believe that culturally responsive teaching and feminist pedagogy are needed to make the classroom more inclusive and equitable for all students, especially those from minoritized backgrounds. We believe this to be a reflective approach to the current gender and race gap in representation in STEM education and career fields

Paul Pacheco's E-Portfolio - Cultural Responsive Teaching Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in the Classroom

Note: This resource comes from Paul Pacheco's Teaching E-Portfolio. Paul's Culturally Responsive Teaching section is linked above. He discusses the representation gaps in STEM education, what is being done in STEM to decrease the gap, and includes sample class material he used to address these issues. Paul also addresses how culturally responsive teaching meets the diverse needs of students and established a safe learning environment for students. Within his reflection, he explains how acknowledging personal biases result in educators becoming more inclusive and supportive in their learning environments

Culturally Responsive Teaching:

Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) is a newer practice, becoming popular and relevant in the late ’90s by Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, and has permeated school systems ever since. CRT is defined as a pedagogy that includes cultural learnings in all aspects of an individual student’s experience. Connecting the child to their culture in a learning environment can significantly influence their educational experience and success. This teaching effort is usually applied to students of color who do not have the inherent connection with their culture, potentially being historically unsuccessful academically or socially alienated. Highlighting the meaningful connection with individual cultures gives students a sense of individuality, which can improve at the double their will to learn and be vulnerable in academic settings. Empowering children with knowledge and relatability influences their education and understanding and their personal feelings and goals. Incorporating CRT into educational settings can be difficult, however, the results are outstanding. Check out the video on the right to see how CRT has improved academics, and the lives and relationships between students and teachers at Capital City Lighthouse Charter School in Arkansas.

Culturally Responsive Education in Action (New America)

Note: "Teachers at Capital City Lighthouse Charter School in North Little Rock, Arkansas, were in for a unique professional development opportunity. Unlike a typical training session, on this late summer day teachers would learn directly from students. Teachers heard first hand student reflections about their school experiences and how well their classes reflected their identities and interests.

Culturally responsive education is an essential element of empowering teachers and students to promote equity in the classroom and social justice in the community. There is no better time in this period of reckoning to do this work." - New America

Feminist Pedagogy:

Feminist Pedagogy is a theory that measures final learning outcomes and goals while accounting for student relationships, well-being, and experiences. Feminist pedagogy transforms the classroom into a liberating environment. The classroom becomes a colloquium for learners to come together as both the student and the teacher. The student and teacher engage in harmonious self-reflection about the material being studied while decongesting social barriers such as sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, and other destructive hatreds to achieve personal enlightenment and knowledge. Feminist pedagogy allows students and teachers to be engaged with their community members, organizations, issues, and movements for social change (Shrewsbury).

Feminist pedagogy challenges students to undergo self-reflection and self-realization with themselves and others. Students become aware of how their peer's experiences come together to shape the world around them. They become conscious of the hardships, challenges, and tribulations people face. "Learners develop independence. The classroom becomes a model of people to work together to accomplish mutual or shared goals and help each other reach individual goals. Students can take risks in such a classroom" (Shrewsbury). Feminist pedagogy restores power to the learner. Students gain the ability to use critical thinking in a reflective process grounded in shared personal experiences from people in their community. This teaching style offers students the opportunity to become owners of their learners. It provides them a reason to explore how the material is applied in their lives, how it affects their lives, and how they can use that understanding to improve their lives and society. Community, empowerment, and leadership are the three pillars of feminist pedagogy.

Empowerment allows students to find their voices, identity, and communicate with others, and act on their understanding of the world. Empowerment provides students the confidence to confront differences, dissolve inequities, and distribute power upon the collective to elevate the community instead of disadvantaging the few. Instead of instilling shame and guilt on students for lived experience, perspectives, and opinions, the classroom environment empowers students to do the opposite. By addressing differences, understanding their origins, accepting themselves as they are, and progressing forward, barriers will be overcome and deemed most beneficial by the group.

Empowering students and diffusing power from the instructor does not render their job useless. It transforms the functions of a teacher.

"Empowering pedagogy does not dissolve the authority or the power of the instructor. It does move from power as domination to power as creative energy. In such a system, the teacher's knowledge and experience are recognized and used with the students to increase the legitimate power. Empowering pedagogy takes the goal of lifelong learning seriously by consciously developing teaching/ learning skills as well as by providing an informational subject" (Shrewsbury).

Teachers must play an active role in the classroom. Feminist pedagogy suggests that teachers use the following classroom strategies:

"1) Enhance student opportunities and abilities to develop their thinking about the goals and objectives they wish and need to accomplish individually and collectively, 2) Develop the students' independence (from formal instructors) as learners, 3) Enhance the stake that everyone has in the success of a course and thereby make clear the responsibility of all members of the class for the learning of all, 4) Develop skills of planning, negotiating, evaluating, and decision making, 5) Reinforce or enhance the self-esteem of class members by the implicit recognition that they are sufficiently competent to play a role in course development and can be change agents, 6) Expand the students' understanding of the subject matter of the course and the joy and difficulty of intense intellectual activity as they actively consider learning goals and sequences" (Shrewsbury).

What is Feminist Pedagogy? (Shrewsbury).

40003432.pdf

Note: In this article, the author defines what is feminist pedagogy, how it improves the minds of learners, and how it can be implemented in the classroom.

Ten Simple Rules for Supporting Historically Underrepresented Students in Science (Arif et al.).

Arif et al. - 2021 - Ten simple rules for supporting historically under.pdf

Note: In this article, the authors share ten teaching strategies that improve the performance of underrepresented students in STEM backed by scientific research.

Teachers relay foundational knowledge, aid student research, and provide flexibility and support for students to achieve projected learning outcomes. Community is needed to empower students. Traditional education has an obsession with rules and societal norms. Most classrooms place power on the teacher to enforce learning. As educators, we set fairness, equity, and respect rules but lack compassion and care integrated into classroom routines and practices. More often than not, students are seen as individuals rather than a collective. Thus, the classroom functions in this manner. Student cliches and groups begin to form based on race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status. When classrooms establish safe learning environments while using culturally responsive teaching, students feel safe, supported, and free to express who they are and how they think. Students can excel academically and socially when they feel liberated from shame and embarrassment. It's powerful when students feel safe to admit their gaps in understanding in front of their peers. A domino effect occurs. Suddenly more and more students begin to join the conversation. They begin to answer the questions they once had. Learning becomes a group activity. Then more lessons become focused on an in-depth discussion of the content being taught and less on the passive absorption of information. The key is to remain supportive, encouraging, and invested in your students' voices. It is essential to acknowledge and correct students when discussion points are inaccurate. However, more important is to ask how they drew that inclusion and open the discussion on what the class thinks. This way, students feel validated for their response while giving other students the opportunity to friendly amend their peers' responses.

Leadership is the final pillar of feminist pedagogy. Leadership in aspects of education is the most liberating component (Howe). Feminist pedagogy focuses on developing leadership by allowing students to act on their beliefs whenever an inclination arises. For example, you may offer students the ability to submit feedback on your teaching methods. Giving students the ability to reflect and measure how much they have learned, the activities they feel best or most minor aid in their learning, and leaving feedback on how well you are teaching allows students to understand and articulate their needs. In return, it will enable you to adjust your practice to best educate your students based on their needs. Students should take on many leadership roles during the course to learn about the different leadership positions within a group. Through leadership experiences, they will learn,

"How to find connections between their needs and the needs of others… As students struggle with evaluation methods, they learn to evaluate actions and connect objectives and achievement. When things aren't working in the classroom, they learn how to analyze the problem and find alternatives… Leadership is a special form of empowerment that empowers others" (Shrewsbury).

Students learn through hands-on experiences with peers. Students also discover that all great leaders must be good followshippers. They understand that even the best leader must be a great listener to decide the most efficient progress. This is especially true for educators. Students look up to their teachers and inspirations of what it is to be a good leader. By practicing opportunities for students to provide feedback, actively participate in classroom dialogue, and take risks, they learn and respect the importance of leader/follower relationships. Leadership in feminist pedagogy "suggests that change does not take place magically but by the active exercise of agency, whether directed at ourselves or structures" (Shrewsbury). Feminist pedagogy coaches students to learn, establish healthy relationships with others, and overcome personal, social, and systemic obstacles.

In Conclusion...

Educators are amazing. They are the backbones of our society. The work of teachers is essential toward progressing culture socially, emotionally, politically, and economically. This work is not aimed at criticizing teachers for their work or style. We intended to expose the gender gap for what it is and offer a teaching strategy that seems to be too underutilized. As products of the U.S. public education system, we believe as soon-to-be college graduates, first-generation students, a woman in STEM, and a gay Latine educator that feminist pedagogy can create more diverse, inclusive, and equitable learning environments for women of color, ultimately decreasing the gender gap in higher education and industry. Feminist pedagogy is not mutually exclusive at aiding women of color. Feminist pedagogy was developed to assist all learners in developing interpersonal relationships, applied critical thinking, and confidence coupled with empathy. We understand that the work of a teacher is never complete. Learning never ends for the career of teachers. To become better educators, mentors, and leaders, we must acknowledge our imperfect teaching styles that result in our students, mentees, and colleagues feeling excluded, insufficient, and unsuccessful. Our responsibility in STEM is to support, guide, and inspire one another, despite our age or experiences, on our educational journeys. Education is liberating, learning is empowering, and community makes it possible.

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