Hello, My name is Theresa Robinson.  I am a science educator dedicated to preparing teachers prepared to teach STEM using inclusive and culturally relevant pedagogies  This video is presents the context for our work and testimonials about its impact during the capacity building phase of our NSF Noyce STEM Teachers Scholars Program. We are now in the phase of recruiting and training future STEM teachers and extending our professional development model to their preparation.

I would like to engage with viewers around ideas for collaborative practices, recommendations for research, questions about training future STEM teachers for CRP, and opportunities for synergy.  Please leave a question or comment. I would love to hear from others engaged in similar work or districts interested in implementing PD for culturally relevant STEM teaching and learning. 

Thank you and happy viewing. 

I am wondering if you find that students who are given more choices in projects and lessons with regard to how they show their thinking and their understanding -- not just an essay, quiz, or worksheet with boxed in answers - tend to show more cultural connections and bring in their lived experiences and connect to the content in deeper ways. We do work with teachers in PD that is geared to help them provide more choice, more multimodal options, in order to encourage more opportunities for the unique and diverse perspectives of the students to have space in the formal classroom/learning environment. It seems hard for teachers to do but it seems like an important aspect of CRP. Do you focus on this in your work with STEM teachers, and is it challenging to bring about this change in practice in your experience?

Thanks for sharing your project! Do you have plans to involve mentor teachers and university teacher educators in your CRP PD so they can reinforce those pedagogies as your future teachers engage in coursework and field experiences? How have you been able to address "fitting" CRP into state standards or district curricular materials? What advice do you have for others wanting to develop school-university partnerships that can enact CRP?

Thank you for exploring the tenets of culturally responsive STEM curriculum, and providing an innovative look into STEM teaching and learning. The inclusive pedagogy serves as tool to promote discussions about strategies educators may adopt to reinforce inclusion for all students. To achieve excellence in inclusive learning, are teachers considering different perspectives in how they deliver content to diverse learners? Is sharing a framework to understanding STEM identity an important aspect for professional development? 

Hello David

Great Questions

Yes, participants are absolutely asked to consider non majority perspectives about the knowledge creation process.  We do a lot of work around the question, What is Science? One of our guest speakers mathematician Dr. Benjamin Dickman discussed the development and use of mathematics from multiple cultural perspectives, who gets to 'do' math. 

Thanks for your work!  A tension that I often encounter in my work is that of balancing the need to share practical, concrete strategies that teachers can take into their classrooms immediately versus long-term, deep, introspective, mindset-shifting work. Do you also run into this tension and how do you think about such tensions in your work?

Thanks for sharing your work Theresa!  It is critical work to prepare and support educators in inclusive and culturally-responsive pedagogies.  Could you say more about the PL experience that you designed and implemented?  Was it totally synchronous online (as shown in the video clip)?  How long was it?  Multiple sessions?  What were the primary themes addressed?  I am also wondering how you are now thinking about taking what you learned in this building phase to extending to preservice teachers' preparation?  Will this be a course?  Activities embedded in coursework?  Thanks for sharing!

Thank you Theresa you are so correct! We need many more STEM teachers and more teachers of color. I am honored to be at a minority serving institution so we are preparing STEM minority teachers. It is so important I agree! Great presentation! So true! Can you explain some of your training approaches a bit more?

Hi Christine - The link to the paper above does not seem to be working? Can you post another link maybe? Thank you!

 Hi Theresa! Your work is very valuable and so important in the pipeline to STEM careers. Diverse perspectives are crucial in industry and in an evolving society. I have conducted research into the creative self-efficacy of undergraduate women engineering majors.

Here is the link to a paper I presented at the 2021 ASEE Conference: https://peer.asee.org/creative-self-efficacy-of...

Are strategies different for teachers who teach at different K-12 levels? How does incorporating creativity within the traditional classroom apply to the culturally diverse classroom? Have you incorporated strategies for project based learning that enhances spatial skills? I found that embedding creativity within the classroom and spatial skills training are very valuable tools to encourage STEM careers. Of course this includes offering them in an atmosphere that welcomes diversity. I really like how you use STEM across the curriculum as well. The challenge for teachers is being able to incorporate these strategies effectively into the classroom. We are creating instructional videos on incorporating STEM into the K-12 classroom as part of our outreach initiatives to high schools with a higher percentage of underrepresented groups. We hope that increasing awareness of simple strategies that teachers can use that encourage STEM careers will be valuable to the teachers and the students. Thank you for your amazing work!

Yes that sounds like a great idea and perhaps a way to get MORE women interested in pursuing an engineering degree. Many see art and the arts as the opposite of science and do not see science as being a creative endeavor but that is so not true! This sounds great!

Getting to the heart of what's going on. That's great. We often allow ourselves to be fooled by increasing numbers without looking to see what else remains the same. Glad you highlighted this contrast - increasing number of students, but still same number of Black STEM teachers. It's time to ask what's truly going on? 

Thank you all for watching and commenting. If you would like to follow up with me. I can be reached @

Email: Theresa.robinson@elmhurst.edu

twitter: TRobson3000

web: theresayrobinson.com

website: https://www.elmhurst.edu/academics/departments/...