Broadening Participation

“Science Theatre Makes You Good at Science”: Affordances of Embodied Performances in Urban Elementary Science Classrooms

School science continues to alienate students identifying with nondominant, non-western cultures, and learners of color, and considers science as an enterprise where success necessitates divorcing the self and corporeal body from ideas and the mind. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind–body divide, we aimed at creating pedagogical spaces and places in science classes that sustain equitable opportunities for engagement and meaning making where body and mind are enmeshed.

Author/Presenter

Maria Varelas

Rebecca T. Kotler

Hannah D. Natividad

Nathan C. Phillips

Rachelle P. Tsachor

Rebecca Woodard

Marcie Gutierrez

Miguel A. Melchor

Maria Rosario

Year
2021
Short Description

School science continues to alienate students identifying with nondominant, non-western cultures, and learners of color, and considers science as an enterprise where success necessitates divorcing the self and corporeal body from ideas and the mind. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind–body divide, we aimed at creating pedagogical spaces and places in science classes that sustain equitable opportunities for engagement and meaning making where body and mind are enmeshed. In the context of a partnership between school- and university-based educators and researchers, we explored how multimodal literacies cultivated through the performing arts, provide students from minoritized communities opportunities to both create knowledge and to position themselves as science experts and brilliant and creative meaning makers.

“Well That's How the Kids Feel!”—Epistemic Empathy as a Driver of Responsive Teaching

While research shows that responsive teaching fosters students' disciplinary learning and equitable opportunities for participation, there is yet much to know about how teachers come to be responsive to their students' experiences in the science classroom. In this work, we set out to examine whether and how engaging teachers as learners in doing science may support responsive instructional practices.

Author/Presenter

Lama Z. Jaber

Vesal Dini

David Hammer

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

In this article, the authors present evidence from teachers' reflections that this stability was supported by the teachers' intellectual and emotional experiences as learners. Specifically, they argue that engaging in extended scientific inquiry provided a basis for the teachers having epistemic empathy for their students—their tuning into and appreciating their students' intellectual and emotional experiences in science, which in turn supported teachers' responsiveness in the classroom.

The Quest for Sustainable Futures: Designing Transformative Learning Spaces with Multilingual Black, Brown, and Latinx Young People Through Critical Response-ability

In an era of global climate change, intertwined with social and ecological predation, there is growing recognition of the importance of building socially, environmentally, culturally pluralistic, just and sustainable futures. Yet many of the calls for reform and discourses around sustainability are authored and defined through top-down approaches, by those who have power, privilege, and cognitive authority, and excludes the voices, identities, and epistemologies of those in the margins.

Author/Presenter

Shakhnoza Kayumova

Deborah J. Tippins

Year
2021
Short Description

In this paper we argue for the need to design and develop transformative learning ecologies that explicitly position the diverse voices of youth from nondominant communities as central to re-defining and re-envisioning relationally just, pluralistic, and sustainable futures. To this end, we seek to provide examples from participatory design-based learning ecologies to illustrate the centering of middle school youth voices and agencies from multilingual Black, Brown, and Latinx communities through critical response-ability.

Promoting Teacher Self-Efficacy for Supporting English Learners in Mathematics: Effects of the Visual Access to Mathematics Professional Development

Teachers’ confidence and facility with strategies that position and support students who are English learners (ELs) as active participants in middle grades mathematics classrooms are key to facilitating ELs’ mathematics learning. The Visual Access to Mathematics (VAM) project developed and studied teacher professional development (PD) focused on linguistically-responsive teaching to facilitate ELs’ mathematical problem solving and discourse.

Author/Presenter

Jill Neumayer DePiper

Josephine Louie

Johannah Nikula

Pamela Buffington

Peter Tierney-Fife

Mark Driscoll

Year
2021
Short Description

The Visual Access to Mathematics (VAM) project developed and studied teacher professional development (PD) focused on linguistically-responsive teaching to facilitate ELs’ mathematical problem solving and discourse. This study examines whether VAM PD has a positive impact on teachers’ self-efficacy in supporting ELs in mathematics and how components of the PD may have influenced teacher outcomes.

Reaching Across the Hallway: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Supporting Computer Science in Rural Schools

Principal Investigator:

"Reaching Across the Hallway: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Supporting Computer Science in Rural Schools" is in its first project year. Our goal is to design and develop a train-the-trainer professional development model that supports 5th-8th grade teachers in integrating culturally relevant computer science into their rural, social studies classrooms.

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Validation of the Equity and Access Rubrics for Mathematics Instruction (VEAR-MI)

Principal Investigator:

This poster describes the work of the Validation of the Equity and Access Rubrics for Mathematics Instruction (VEAR-MI) project, which aims to address the growing need to develop empirically grounded ways of assessing the extent to which the practices that are being outlined in research literature actually serve to support students who are currently underserved and underrepresented in mathematics.

Co-PI(s): Annie Garrison Wilhelm, Southern Methodist University; Temple Walkowiak, North Carolina State University

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The Developmental Emergence and Consequences of Spatial and Math Gender Stereotypes

Principal Investigator:

Attitudes and beliefs about math and space have been found to be predictive of STEM participation and achievement, with females generally reporting lower math and spatial self-concept and higher anxieties related to these domains (e.g., Sokolowski et al., 2019). However, little work to date has explored the acquisition of these attitudes and beliefs, particularly related to the domain of space. This is important, because comparing the acquisition of math and spatial attitudes and beliefs may shed light on potential interventions for improving STEM outcomes.

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Teacher Professional Learning to Support Student Motivational Competencies During Science Instruction (Collaborative Research: Harris, Linnenbrink-Garcia, and Marchand)

Principal Investigator:

This collaborative project uses co-design as a strategy to develop a professional learning approach to help middle school teachers support students' motivation and engagement in the context of NGSS instruction. The project brings together motivation experts, science education researchers, and middle school science teachers. The poster outlines the project goals, introduces five motivation design principles, and describes four tools that were co-developed to support teachers' professional learning and practice for supporting student motivation.

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Teacher Professional Learning to Support Student Motivational Competencies During Science Instruction (Collaborative Research: Harris, Linnenbrink-Garcia, and Marchand)

Principal Investigator:

This collaborative project uses co-design as a strategy to develop a professional learning approach to help middle school teachers support students' motivation and engagement in the context of NGSS instruction. The project brings together motivation experts, science education researchers, and middle school science teachers. The poster outlines the project goals, introduces five motivation design principles, and describes four tools that were co-developed to support teachers' professional learning and practice for supporting student motivation.

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Target Audience:

Teacher Professional Learning to Support Student Motivational Competencies During Science Instruction (Collaborative Research: Harris, Linnenbrink-Garcia, and Marchand)

Principal Investigator:

This collaborative project uses co-design as a strategy to develop a professional learning approach to help middle school teachers support students' motivation and engagement in the context of NGSS instruction. The project brings together motivation experts, science education researchers, and middle school science teachers. The poster outlines the project goals, introduces five motivation design principles, and describes four tools that were co-developed to support teachers' professional learning and practice for supporting student motivation.

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Target Audience: