By Javeria Salman
In Maggie Waldner’s elementary school classroom in downtown Denver, math lessons rarely focus on rote memorization. She talks about problem solving and real-world issues, like homelessness. And she makes sure her racially diverse class of boys and girls learns about mathematicians and scientists who look like them. Especially the girls.
This is what culturally responsive instruction looks like in STEM education.
For a while now, schools across the country have used culturally responsive teaching practices in English and history classrooms, engaging learners in the material by incorporating their own experiences and cultures. In science and math, though, it’s a fairly new idea.
But experts say finding better ways to teach STEM to students of color and girls is urgent. While women make up half of the college-educated workforce in the U.S., they hold less than one third of the jobs in science and engineering. Black and Latina women make up just 3 percent of that workforce.
A new report by 100Kin10, an organization focused on ending the STEM teacher shortage, places part of the blame for this shortage on the lack of high-quality STEM courses in high schools, which in turn results in fewer students developing an interest in STEM subjects and discouraging them from pursuing STEM teaching careers. Too often the STEM classes that are offered are of poor quality and fail to recognize the experiences and contributions of women and people of color in these fields. High-quality STEM education, the report states, makes coursework “relevant to students’ lives and passions,” with a focus on applied learning, rather than holding tight to rote practices.
After a summer of protests over racial justice, coupled with a pandemic that has exacerbated educational inequality, calls on educators across the country to better teach ethnically diverse groups of students have become more urgent.
Waldner, who teaches at the Downtown Denver Expeditionary School, a public charter, is a member of 100Kin10’s Teacher Forum. She has long incorporated culturally responsive practices and strategies into her classroom. Her approach is twofold, she said. She provides students “windows and mirrors,” so they can see themselves and their community in the curriculum, and also shows them the lives and experiences of those who are different from them. By centering teaching around these practices, she said, teachers can ensure that what students learn isn’t irrelevant to what they experience outside of school.
So, how can a teacher bring that focus on personal relevance into STEM education?
First, because the rote teaching of mathematics may be particularly ineffective with African American students, doing little to prepare them for the STEM field, Waldner stays away from a mechanical approach. She encourages students to make educated guesses about how to solve a math problem, and asks them to try teaching each other using different strategies, a tactic that helps spark discussion on the variety of ways to reach a solution. She also uses what she calls a “conjecture wall,” where she writes down the guesses and questions students have about how to approach the problems in their own words, so they can notice the patterns in their work.
“It’s less about getting a right answer or solving it a certain way. It’s really about being able to talk about what you're doing,” Waldner said. This “helps kids see themselves as problem solvers and also it gives them power,” she said.
Second, Waldner said it’s also important to provide hands-on learning that connects directly to children’s experiences in their communities. She does this by presenting math problems in the format of a story. But, before they try to solve the problem, students retell the story to each other, and answer a question to check their understanding of the problem it presents.
“When we are learning a STEM subject, or going further into a topic from a STEM point of view, we often talk about how we need to identify the problem, make some sort of solution, try out our solution, and then think again,” Waldner said. “What worked? What didn't? What do we notice about how we solved a problem in comparison to others? What will we change next time?”
Sometimes, she’ll choose a societal issue to help her students understand larger problems. Every year, the students at the school learn about homelessness and then do a project to help homeless community members. When her students study the issue, they use the same approach they take with STEM problems and ask questions such as, “What is the problem? What could we do to help solve it? What are others doing to solve this problem? Did it work? What would we do differently next time?” she said.
“When we are working to understand homelessness in Denver from a mathematical perspective, such as how many people are experiencing homelessness and whether this number has changed over time,” Waldner said, “this leads to discussions of why and what we can do.”
Making STEM education more culturally responsive is also among the goals of the Million Girls Moonshot, a new initiative launched by the STEM Next Opportunity Fund, with support from other tech funders including the Intel Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The organization hopes to engage one million more girls in STEM learning opportunities through afterschool and summer STEM programs over the next five years.
“We want the girls to feel empowered, so that they go through high school, taking the courses that they need to take to have a good shot at being successful in the sciences at the college level,” said Penny Noyce, the founding board chair of STEM Next Opportunity Fund. “We want to continue to sort of create this sisterhood that feels not lonely in pursuing excellence in math, computer, physics, science in general so that we can increase those numbers,” said Noyce, who grew up around technology as the daughter of Intel founder Robert Noyce.
When girls and students of color don’t see themselves represented in STEM education and thus don’t pursue STEM careers, said Gabriela González, deputy director of the Intel Foundation, we miss out on their unique talent and perspective in helping to solve real-world problems like the ones that our country is facing now.
“These are careers that can really help improve their quality of life, not just for themselves, but for their families and also, at the same time contribute to the larger community and lifting up of their communities through their contributions,” González said.
Waldner agrees. “If kids, and people, are able to understand societal problems in a mathematical or scientific (way) … they're able to solve those problems,” she said.
Send story ideas and news tips to salman@hechingerreport.org. Tweet at @JaveriaSal. Read high-quality news about innovation and inequality in education at The Hechinger Report. And, here’s a list of the latest news and trends in the future of learning.
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1. Providing support for educator professional development. Professional development for educators looks very different in the Covid-era; group assemblies and in-person workshops are a thing of the past in most districts. But some states and school districts have turned to the use of “micro-credentials” to recognize professional learning among their educators. These digital certifications, which verify teachers’ proficiency in a specific skill or set of skills, are available online, allowing educators to work on their own time and at their own pace. Digital Promise, a nonprofit that works for innovation in schools, offers more than 500 micro-credentials on its platform, including those focused on digital fluency and transitioning to digital learning. The organization is also working with several partners to provide educators access to this professional development resource. In Delaware, the organization is working with the state’s Department of Education, in conjunction with the Delaware Literacy Plan, to offer educators the chance to earn micro-credentials from the state. Digital Promise recently released a report that includes insights from educators and school administrators at five school districts that participated in a two-year effort in which, among other changes, they integrated micro-credentials into teachers’ professional learning plans.
2. Personalized coaching for schools. As school leaders continue to deal with how to respond to the changing landscape of education during a pandemic, The Learning Accelerator, a national nonprofit, created the Always Ready for Learning Coaching Network to provide K-12 school district leaders free individualized support and coaching on the challenges facing schools right now. The program offers assistance in remote instruction planning and building an equitable curriculum, resources to address mental health and internet access, support for teachers and students, and parent and community engagement or financial guidance. Depending on the needs of the school, the coaching network will connect the school leader with one its expert education partners to provide specific coaching and actionable steps. The program has already worked with around 1,300 schools. Nithi Thomas, a partner at The Learning Accelerator who has been working on this initiative, said the coaching network helps address the equity gap between schools by providing all schools, regardless of their finances, access to a network of experts to help them with all their needs.
3. New poll shows students want a more equal and inclusive system. According to a new poll by Axios-Ipsos, while a majority of Americans believe that education is still the best “pathway to betterment,” over 80 percent believe that public education in America is unequal. The Axios/Ipsos Education Inequity poll, conducted earlier this month, is based on a nationally representative probability sample of 1,999 adults, in the general population, age 18 or older. Interestingly, the poll found that a majority of Americans say they did not learn enough about the role African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans played in building America, and more than two-thirds of respondents agreed that public schools should teach more about racism as part of American history lessons. Read the report.
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