Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education Supporting Equitable and Effective Teaching (2025) / Chapter Skim
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3 Understanding Teaching, Learning, and Equity
3 Understanding Teaching, Learning, and Equity
Pages 49-69
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From page 49... ...
undergraduate STEM education, raising many issues related to the diversity, opportunity, and challenges for institutions teaching undergraduate STEM education. While the diversity of students, instructors, institutions means that decisions must be made with awareness of local context, extensive research provides strong evidence to help guide understanding and decision making.
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. Students in large STEM courses that combine pre-class preparatory assignments and in-class active learning activities earn higher grades, have lower failure rates, and report an increased sense of community over courses that use simply lecture (Eddy & Hogan, 2014; Freeman et al., 2014)
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. Together these fields provide evidence for teaching approaches that foster learning of particular relevance to this study, they capture information about inequities in STEM learning and provide information about teaching strategies that reduce inequity in STEM learning environments.
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Instructors in the undergraduate STEM classrooms influence students' learning by defining course-level learning goals and incorporating teaching practices and opportunities for students to achieve these learning goals. Instructors can choose goals and practices that focus on mastery of skills rather than performance in order to help students engage in higher-order cognitive skills, persist in the face of failure, and retain knowledge and skills over the long term (Henry et al., 2019; Hernandez et al., 2013)
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Here we discuss the related concept of "active learning," which has been frequently used in conversations about improving undergraduate STEM education. The phrase has been so well used that it sometimes seems to mean any practice that deviates from traditional lecturing.
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While implementing active learning has been shown to increase student achievement and can reduce achievement gaps in undergraduate STEM courses it is still incumbent on instructors to implement active learning strategies in equitable ways that respect student identity (Freeman et al., 2014; Dewsbury et al., 2022; Theobald et al., 2020)
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STEM disciplines remain exclusionary spaces, and STEM learning spaces, by extension, have the potential to perpetuate similar experiences for students. The legacy of systemic inequity can be seen, for example, in unidirectional delivery of course content that positions instructors as the sole experts (O'Neill et al., 2023)
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. The power of this transformative change can grow the next generation of STEM experts to change the STEM disciplines with STEM learning spaces can be modeled appropriately.
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. Instructors in foundational courses across the STEM disciplines are more likely to emphasize content knowledge as the most important outcome for students, and to spend most of class time lecturing (Ferrare, 2019; Stains et al., 2018)
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, and lead to maintenance and reinforcement of the existing structural inequities in the STEM fields. Modifying these critical foundational courses, which often serve programs in multiple departments (e.g., calculus is required for several STEM majors)
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. In STEM disciplines, the hidden curriculum includes expectations about how to interact with instructors and teaching assistants in office hours, the value placed on pursuing undergraduate research, knowing how and when to ask for letters of recommendation, and many more components that are discipline- specific.
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. These experiences also have numerous potential barriers to participation and full engagement that produce systemic inequities in access and success with underserved students facing disproportionate financial, cultural, social, and physical barriers (Carabajal et al., 2017; Morales et al., 2020; Posselt & Nuñez, 2022)
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However, use of technology alone does not address the intertwined challenges of ineffective teaching and systemic inequity described above. For example, although online courses and degree programs have the potential to broaden access to higher education, they consistently have higher attrition rates than in-person courses and programs (Bawa, 2016)
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For examples of some potential research questions that emerged from the committee's study, see Chapter 10. Grade Penalties Evidence from across the STEM disciplines indicates that, when grouped by race/ethnicity or gender, students from underrepresented groups receive proportionally more low grades than their overrepresented peers, even when controlling for other factors like academic preparation (Blatt et al., 2020; Denaro et al., 2022; Harris et al., 2020; Matz et al., 2017)
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. In addition, a substantial literature points to "within-college" factors -- including earned credits in introductory STEM courses, participation in key academic activities and hostile classroom environments as shaping students' experiences, persistence, and performance (Barbera et al., 2020; Chang et al., 2014; Evans et al., 2020; Martin et al., 2017.
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Power and Privilege In addition to the evidence for inequity in STEM courses and programs, there are issues regarding the centering of power and privilege. Many students perceive that the STEM disciplines privilege White males (Dancy et al., 2020)
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Instructors who advocate for equitable and effective teaching practice on a wide scale may be viewed with skepticism or considered to be wasting their time. EXISTING WORK TOWARDS EQUITABLE AND EFFECTIVE TEACHING Many individuals and groups have put significant work into improving undergraduate learning experiences and making them more equitable and effective.
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From page 66... ...
continues the work of their Faculty Success Initiative to explore teaching in the context of other components of instructor responsibilities via a systemic change approach. 9 2 More information about the AUERU is available at https://www.ueru.org/home 3 More information about the SEISMIC collaborative is available at https://www.seismicproject.org/ 4 More information about CIRTL is available at https://cirtl.net/ 5 More information about the Inclusive STEM Teaching Project is available at https://www.inclusivestemteaching.org/ 6 More information about ACUE is available at https://acue.org/ 7 More information about the Project Kaleidoscope is available at https://www.aacu.org/initiatives/project-kaleidoscope 8 More information about the AAC&U is available at https://www.aacu.org/ 9 More information about the APLU's Faculty Success Initiative is available at https://www.aplu.org/our-work/2-fostering-research-innovation/aplu-aspire/institutional-change-network/ Prepublication copy, uncorrected proofs
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10 More information about the Vision and Change project in biology is available at https://new.nsf.gov/news/vision-change-undergraduate-biology-initiative 11 More information about the Vision and Change project in the geosciences is available at https://www.americangeosciences.org/change/ 12 More information about BioQUEST and Qubes is available at https://qubeshub.org/ 13 More information about Carnegie Math Pathways is available at https://carnegiemathpathways.org/ 14 More information about the Equity Based Teaching Collective is available at https://www.everylearnereverywhere.org/blog/new-playbook-outlines-an-ecosystem-approach-to-equitybased-teaching/ 15 More information about NACUBO's Blueprint for Student-Centered Strategic Finance is available at https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2024/NACUBO-Student-Success-Hub-Highlights-FinancialLinks-to-Equitable-Student-Outcomes 16 More information about the Achieving the Dream program is available at https://achievingthedream.org/ 17 More information about the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program is available at https://highered.aspeninstitute.org/ 18 More information about CCPI-STEM is available at https://www.ccpi-stem.org/ 19 More information about SAGE 2YC is available at https://serc.carleton.edu/sage2yc/index.html 20 More information about the UDL approach is available at https://udlguidelines.cast.org/ Prepublication copy, uncorrected proofs
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From page 68... ...
The evidence is more mixed on the ability of evidencebased teaching approaches to address inequities in student experiences and more research on the best ways to decrease inequities in grading, persistence, belonging, and other areas would be beneficial. The current common approaches to foundational courses, prerequisites, course progressions, and course combinations complicates efforts to provide equitable and effective STEM education and there are several other special considerations that are relevant to students Prepublication copy, uncorrected proofs
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From page 69... ...
Widespread use of teaching strategies that are not supported by research have contributed to the disparities in opportunity and outcomes for undergraduate STEM students. Conclusion 3.2: Instructional practices that take students' interests and experiences into account and empower them with authentic opportunities to engage with disciplinary content, practices, and analysis are more effective for a wider range of students than instructional practices that rely solely on lecture, reading, and memorization of content, procedures, and algorithms.
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