Supporting equitable participation and access has potential to change existing narratives and views on what it looks like to teach and participate in STEM classrooms and what it means to work within the STEM field. However, aiming for equity involves identifying and outlining specific practices that support and empower students who have historically been underserved specifically in mathematics classrooms. This video is about the work we are currently doing to name such practices concretely and to develop an observational tool. This tool has great potential and could be used a.) to structure discussions about equitable instruction in the context of professional development for educators, b.) to provide feedback to instructors as they work to implement the practices in their classrooms, or c.) as a measurement of instructional quality for researchers interested in doing large- and small-scale studies.

We’d love to hear what you think about the following:

What changes to the current educational system are needed to support equitable participation and access in STEM? What are some of the more immediate things that educators can do in their classrooms to support the goals of providing equitable STEM education for all?

We welcome your insights, comments, questions, stories and experiences related to these and other questions. We encourage students, parents, policy makers, funders, researchers, administrators, and especially teachers to share their perspectives!

I really enjoyed your video and project.  What were the most profound lessons you learned through your work? 

I enjoyed the examples you gave of practices teachers can use to support equitable participation. I know you're developing an observation rubric, but have you done any work with teachers around the practices identified in your rubric?  

This is a great video and I really like the description of the practices. So much information that can support equitable instruction.  Thanks for sharins.

I'm very interested in this work and I think it will make a real contribution to the field. In addition to being a useful tool for research, it seems like it could be a very useful self-assessment and coaching tool for both preservice and inservice teachers. Are you looking for projects to pilot? When do you anticipate making the tool available?

I enjoyed this video and the work described here. These kinds of supports to help teachers in their interactions with students offer such opportunities for both students and their teachers. Nice work!

Thanks Sarah! We certainly aim to support both teachers and students through this work 

Such awesome stuff.  Perhaps teaching with kindness can be learned and taught? I am really struck by the eloquence of the framing.  For instance, approaching with Curiosity.  That is such a beautiful way to positively frame the behavior--and it is actionable.  I am looking forward to using your work with my pre-service teachers.

What a wonderful way to illustrate intentionality in terms of how we interact with students and how naturally asset based framing can be put into practice in the classroom.  Bravo!

Yes, Jessica! Well said! Asset based instructional practices can be organically incorporated into the classroom and when approached with intentionality, it can be developed by teachers. Thank you :)

Lovely focus and support for both teachers and students. Your descriptions and illustrations of curiosity, language, and open-ended questions as practices teachers need to learn and use are key to equitable classrooms. Kudos! 

Hello VEAR-MI team--thanks for sharing your work. Providing framing, language, and tools that are useful in both research and practice is so important for improving learning environments. Your examples show how the teaching perspectives and moves you've identified can powerfully reshape the learning environment to promote equitable opportunities. I'm curious to know if you've seen evidence of students taking up similar perspectives and moves in their interactions with teachers and peers. 

I agree with others that the rubric and examples/non-examples are great tools to guide pre- and in-service teachers. I think that it is sometimes difficult to self-assess what needs improvement when there are positive intentions, but these concrete examples clearly identify shifts in the way teachers can communicate that may have great impacts on students.  Do you know when the tools will be available?  

Thanks for sharing!

Hi Josie, thank you so much for your interest in our project. We agree that the concrete examples and non-examples are valuable to helping teachers actually promote equity and access in their classrooms in observable ways. We are currently collecting evidence of validity to support the use of the rubrics. At this stage, this includes a generalizability study to establish how many coders and videos are necessary to obtain consistent scores for teachers. Moving forward, we will examine relations to other variables and other sources of evidence based on the AERA/NCME/APA test standards. It's hard to anticipate when the evidence will be sufficient to support its use more widely; we would love to keep in touch and share more after we analyze the generalizability study data. Please email us at vearmiproject@ncsu.edu if you would like!

I enjoyed hearing about your work! It so important to consider teaching practices as well as supporting teachers in order to create more inclusive academic environments. Great work! 

Bravo to all for this wonderful discussion! Thank you for viewing and adding your questions and expertise. Please share the STEM Showcase with others so they can participate in the discussion too. Let's get more educators involved in viewing these top projects. Voting and discussion ends on May 18th at 8PM EDT. (but viewing is open anytime) https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/

For presenters, what are your next steps going forward? 

Thank you, DeLene!  We are really enjoying the showcase and learning about other projects.  We've been sharing on social media and with our networks and will continue to do so.  :-) 

Our most immediate next step for the project is a generalizability study to determine how many coders and videos are necessary to obtain reliable scores on the EAR-MI rubrics. We will also examine relations to other variables and other sources of validity evidence based on the AERA/NCME/APA standards.  We are excited about the rubrics' potential as a tool for both researchers and practitioners.  Thank you for checking out our work!  

 I appreciate the concrete examples given, and the dialogue 'snippets.' I think this would be a great 'primer' to open a conversation with my PSTs!

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to hear more about the work two of my classmates are involved in. We don't often talk about the research projects we are a part of, but we should definitely do more of that!

I enjoyed your video and learning about your project's potential implications for teacher implementation in the classrooms. In particular, the examples given were a great visual for how a teacher could respond to students, rather than react. These would have been very useful to me when I was teaching. Simple examples with HUGE impact! 

Hi Jill! Thank you for checking our work! I agree with you that it is so important to share our research projects. As you mentioned, it is our goal for these rubrics to become a tool teachers in the classroom and researchers can use to constantly assess instructional practices to benefit students and provide more equitable learning experiences. Thanks again, Jill

This is incredible work and such an important topic. I'm excited to learn more about supporting equitable participation and access in STEM classrooms!

In response to Dr. Wilson's questions:

Many changes are necessary but teacher preparation and ongoing teacher education in these areas are a must. More immediately, educators can seek out current research-based practices and learn about the purpose behind these practices, and begin to implement those practices in their teaching right away.

Yes we need to make sure all student voices are included! Teacher behaviors are so important. Teachers need to be acceptable and supportive of all students. Great project!

This is life-changing, world-changing work!

I'm wondering whether among the wonderful practices that you described, you also include teachers keeping track of who they call on when students share... we've seen teachers asking one or more students to keep track and the data is illuminating.

Great video! As others have mentioned--the concrete examples really help me to understand the flavor and texture of your rubrics (and I'm so excited to read about the rest of the 11 practices). The specific examples of practices that you offered in the video speak loudly and clearly to me as vital work in the mathematics classroom. I'm curious about how you identified and defined the 11 practices and their dimensions (for lack of a better term). I'm sure that's a whole paper in itself, but I'd love to know even just a little bit about how they came about. Thanks for sharing your work with us!

Ah! Excellent. Thank you--both for the summary, and the reference. I'm looking forward to reading the paper!

What an incredible gift you are providing to students.  This is what teaching is all about, so proud of all of you for researching what works!

Great project and yes we do need to support all students and meet them where they are at themselves. 

Thank you for your video and this work.  As a former engineer (and often the "only" when I was in college), I am so passionate about this topic.  I believe this rubric will be useful across content areas, not just mathematics.  I look forward to following this study!

Thank you so much for doing this important work! Have you thought about how your rubric might be adapted to fit for an informal education audience?

I agree that this is a gift to teachers and their students. The rubrics establish important practices for addressing issues of equity in STEM instruction. Excellent work.

I love this!! In our work through the Virgin Island Institute for STEM Education Research and Practice, we work with teachers from all three islands in the USVI. We have been supporting teachers in developing Project Based Lessons (PBLs) that reflect the local context and culture. I am excited about the strategies discussed in the video as they can direct application to our minority-majority schools that have struggled with student performance. I hope to connect you with the director of the STEM Institute, Dr. Nadia Monrose Mills, who works directly with the teachers. These strategies and rubric seem like they could enrich that PD program greatly.

Thank you, Lawanda! It sounds like you are involved in very interesting work. We'd love for you to connect us with Dr. Nadia Monrose Mills. Our email address is vearmiproject@ncsu.edu. We're grateful for your idea to connect our groups--I'm confident that we could learn a lot from the work going on at the Virgin Island Institute for STEM Education Research and Practice!

Thank you.  One of my very favorite videos this year!  Especially from the perspective of the videos that taught ME a great deal..  Very enjoyable.

This very much aligns with our approach to education. Very learner driven. Multilingual and with very diverse teams of educators. Exploring, discovering. Encouraging students to discover the answers for themselves, rather than educators "giving them" the answers.  Yet guiding, encouraging, fun opportunities.

The way you approach things very much has deepened how I look at education.  Thank you!

Thank you for sharing. This work fits nicely with a need we have noticed working with teachers who are looking to incorporate more student dialogue into their math classrooms.  As teachers begin incorporating deeper conceptual problems and allowing students to grapple, they often struggle with their new role.  This video provides some concrete ways (e.g., focusing on curiosity, highlighting resources, encouraging dialogue in any language) to interact with students to support their growth.  Thank you and good luck in your validation efforts!

Great support for both the students and teachers. Thanks for sharing.