Search Results (14)

As diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in higher education face increasing political resistance, it is critical to understand how equity-centered institutional change is fostered, and who is transformed in the process. This study examines the intended and emergent outcomes of faculty professional development initiatives implemented through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence (HHMI IE) program. We analyzed annual institutional reports and anonymous reflections from four public universities in a regional Peer Implementation Cluster (PIC), focusing on how change occurred at individual, community, and institutional levels. Guided by Kezar’s Shared Equity Leadership (SEL) framework, our thematic analysis revealed that while initiatives were designed to improve student outcomes through inclusive pedagogy, the most profound outcome was the development of equity consciousness among faculty. Defined as a growing awareness of systemic inequities and a sustained commitment to address them, equity consciousness emerged as the most frequently coded theme across all levels of change. These findings suggest that equity-centered faculty development can serve as a catalyst for institutional transformation, not only by shifting teaching practices but also by building distributed leadership and deeper organizational engagement with equity. This effort also emphasizes that documenting emergent outcomes is essential for recognizing the holistic impact of sustained institutional change. Full article

In this critical literature review, we examine how middle-level pedagogies, specifically critical pedagogies, impact students’ academic, physical, and socioemotional development. This literature review examines critical pedagogies research in middle-level education, focusing on methods that address systemic inequities and center diverse and historically marginalized student populations. Examining the literature from 2013 to 2023, key findings indicate that critical pedagogies, including culturally responsive teaching practices, diverse instructional approaches, and decolonial and antiracist strategies can impact student engagement and development. When used purposefully to foster equity, these approaches disrupt institutional power dynamics, promote social justice, and support diverse student needs. However, there is a lack of research on these pedagogies when in practice for a sustained amount of time, as well as a lack of inclusion of literature with student voices. Because of this, we call for future research to include the perspectives and voices of middle-level students to better understand and refine critical pedagogical practices. Full article

Throughout the globe, there is growing attention being paid to issues of equity and efforts to produce more equitable student learning outcomes in schools, and much of the scholarship internationally has begun to center school leaders as key drivers of more equitable conditions. Indeed, in the United States, persistent inequities in education have highlighted the need for K-12 principals who can effectively support diverse students. Effective leader preparation and development, particularly with a focus on equity, is crucial, as it equips school leaders with the knowledge and skills to create inclusive and equitable learning environments. U.S.-based research highlights that high-quality, equity-centered preparation programs can significantly impact student outcomes, emphasizing the importance of integrating equity-focused training in leadership development. However, we know less about the design of high-quality preparation programs oriented around equity, and scholars have noted that current programs are often ill-equipped to prepare equity-centered leaders. Therefore, this study provides an integrative review of the U.S.-based equity-centered principal preparation literature to extract learnings from several types of publications, including descriptive and empirical studies, literature reviews, and conceptual essays. This study provides insights into four key elements of equity-centered principal preparation and development: program vision, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. This review consolidates insights from the existing literature into a single, accessible article, offering valuable learnings for program faculty, others who prepare school principals, and researchers focused on equity-centered preparation. Additionally, while centered on the U.S. context, this review is likely to be of value to leadership preparation and development programs in other national contexts, particularly those that have more recently begun to form. Full article

This qualitative study examines how pre-service teachers incorporate asset-based, multilingual and equity-focused pedagogies, prioritizing students’ funds of knowledge and advocating for culturally relevant and sustaining approaches. Through an analysis of 92 social studies unit plans developed by pre-service teachers in the final semester of their teacher credential program, the study highlights students’ efforts in integrating locally relevant curriculum, translanguaging, and inclusive pedagogies in their teaching. The study emphasizes the transformative potential of integrating linguistic and cultural resources into content area teaching to cultivate inclusive and equitable learning environments for emergent bilinguals. Full article

Equity and inclusion are requisites of high-quality Physical Education (PE). However, there is a substantial gap in understanding PE Teacher Education’s (PETE) effectiveness in preparing Preservice Teachers (PSTs) to implement equity-driven pedagogies. Moreover, focused on individual retrospective gameplay engagement rates (participation time), current research fails to provide a holistic perspective of the practical manifestations of equity and inclusion in PE. This study fills this void with novel insights offered by a mixed-methods case study examining the following: (i) the process-oriented teaching strategies employed by a PST trained to deliver inclusive pedagogies, alongside student voices on lived experiences; and (ii) the outcome-oriented gameplay patterns across two teaching units (Basketball and Volleyball). Participants included one PST and 26 students. Extensive observations and focus groups mapped the applied teaching strategies and student responses. Video-based social network analysis captured equity and inclusion in students’ gameplay patterns, using metrics such as degree prestige. Findings indicate the PETE impact in inducing PSTs’ inclusive manipulation of learning activities and the fostering of inclusive team membership and positive collaboration. SNA metrics evidenced equitable and inclusive gameplay patterns. Despite pedagogical efforts, content-specific factors may influence students’ gameplay inclusion. Hence, a reflection on the multifaceted and non-linear nature of promoting inclusive participation is prompted. Full article

This paper describes a project to build linguistic awareness among science educators at multiple levels: pre-service K–12 teachers, in-service K–12 teachers, and university faculty in both education and STEM fields. Educational linguists from a language-focused non-profit research organization created modules on teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students for a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program for middle school science educators at a large urban U.S. university. The module content, which was integrated into three science education methods courses, was designed around three key principles: linguistic understanding, critical language awareness, and pedagogical modeling. A critical component to the project’s success was fostering “buy-in” from the various groups of educators through multiple means, including piloting materials with in-service science teachers, training university faculty on the language and literacy materials, and revising content based on feedback from the MAT program faculty and students. The findings demonstrate that over time, the educators re-examined their roles as teachers of language and literacy and reassessed their thinking related to science instruction, highlighting the efficacy of incorporating language development content into training and professional development for STEM educators at multiple levels. Full article

While culturally responsive teaching is widely acknowledged as essential to student success, a lack of consistency in what it is called, what it looks like, and how to enact it can present a challenge for educators. Further, the trend toward political polarization has spread fear and misunderstanding of critical race theory and is now taking aim at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in education and society, including culturally responsive teaching. Thus, it behooves scholars and educators to assert unequivocally that culturally responsive teaching is not an approach that silences or condemns any group of students’ cultural knowledge, beliefs, or perspectives, be they mainstream or underrepresented. Rather, one essential component across multiple nuanced definitions of culturally responsive teaching is a focus on identifying and leveraging all students’ cultural strengths in service of learning. One well-established cultural asset of many African American students, who consistently experience inequitable outcomes in U.S. schools, is their language. As African American Language (AAL) has been identified as the most widely studied language variety in the world, the body of scholarship identifying and exploring its strengths is rich and robust. Using the framework of Foster et al.’s Heuristic for Thinking about Culturally Responsive Teaching (HiTCRiT), this review explores scholarship on the use of AAL in three spheres—everyday discourse, literature and expository texts, and popular media—to illustrate both the challenges and potential of enacting asset-focused pedagogies by leveraging a broad and diverse variety of texts. Full article

The lockdown during the pandemic questioned the learning and working conditions but underlined crucially the teaching pedagogy and new essential teachers’ roles and competencies, and on the whole, the operational framework of education for quality of education for all. The research was carried out through a European Project and gathered at training centers in two countries focusing on learning and pedagogical issues during the lockdown through focus group discussion methodology and labels analysis. If planning, material resources, and health issues came out as relevant difficulty categories, the findings underlined collaborative projects and capacitating pedagogy as efficient and helpful. The findings also questioned the quality-of-life framework at school and the teaching pedagogy and new teachers’ roles as competencies to cope with such a situation to support transformative learning. The outcomes suggested a positive operational framework, the innovative bienvivance paradigm, derived from medical methodology, which can help school organizations by inner development for outer changes to integrate diversity, equity, and educational quality efforts into their missions. It aims at serving inclusive excellence toward human resource sustainability and zero waste of human resources. It can be seen as an effective framework for quality and equity in education. It supports the UN and UNESCO recommendations and the psycho-socio-economic optimization of human resource issues, which are crucial in these human resource mobility and migrations waves, and broadly copes with global changes. Full article

The paper in question is focused on (1) valuing the expanded and transdisciplinary approach for the definition of cultural heritage, consolidated in Brazil from the 1970s/1980s onwards, (2) and its subsequent applicability in the field of education, under the influence of a liberating pedagogy proposed by educator Paulo Freire. An important consequence of this process involves the conception of a formal education system structured to promote collectivity, equality, diversity, and educational equity, as a solution towards ensuring both the learning and development of students. (3) The paper discusses the contribution of the expanded context of cultural heritage and its relationship with the field of education in the development of pedagogical strategies that promote educational equity, through the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), a document that parameterizes the curricula from early childhood education to high school in Brazil. From a bibliographic review, the paper presents the conjuncture on which the new look at cultural heritage has been consolidated, and the consequent redefinition of heritage education actions, and then, as a result, analyzes the approximation between this new approach and the formal educational strategies present in the BNCC, as well as the possibilities of intercommunication between both. Full article

This article emerged from my study of three alternative-certification teachers, or teacher learners as they tried to enact culturally responsive practices while navigating their first year of teaching and taking graduate courses for initial certification. These teacher learners worked to develop their understanding and capacities to enact a culturally responsive pedagogy but found that standardization of content and conceptions of what constitutes “good students”, appropriate classroom conduct, and micro-managed professional learning communities all created environments hostile to their attempts to develop as equity-minded educators and culturally responsive practitioners. However, their experiences changed once the COVID-19 pandemic closed these teacher learners’ schools to in-person instruction and sent them home to instruct online for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester. Free from the constrictive macro-structures and socio-political contexts in their physical workplaces, their planning showed them employing more culturally responsive practices and considering those practices more deeply. Once outside the cultures of practice, formed around neoliberal conceptions of success and measuring learning, these teacher learners became the sole mediators of the conflicting knowledge sources of their jobs and their university methods courses. On their own they began to confront the ways educational institutions stubbornly cling to hegemonic concepts of their communities and valorize work centered on concepts of knowledge and ways of knowing that bear little resemblance to society’s current reality. Away from the wider cultures of their schools during the COVID-19 lockdown and aided in mediating their own development using a dialogically structured lesson planning template inspired by—the Heuristic for Thinking About Culturally Responsive Teaching (HiTCRiT)—the teacher learners focused their instruction on their students making both their students’ learning and their own conceptions of CRP more real and their students’ learning more equitable. Full article

To inform equity-oriented and responsive middle grades teacher education, the current article is a qualitative study of the lived experiences of middle grades teacher candidates enacting critical consciousness in their first semester in a two-year equity-oriented middle grades teacher preparation program. Equity-oriented and responsive middle grades teacher education is defined as professional learning for middle grades preservice and inservice teachers that advances their development of critical consciousness, develops their capacity, knowledge, and skills as culturally and developmentally responsive teachers of young adolescents, and attends to their cultural and historical locations, pedagogical needs, interests, and concerns. Using a phenomenological research tradition and theories of critical consciousness and culturally relevant pedagogies, researchers closely examined 20 participants’ narratives and annotated reflections on how they “read the world” as perceived through the lenses of their cultural and historical locations and their descriptions of their experiences with critical incidents of perceived injustice as documented in Justice Journals. Two major themes emerged in participants’ data regarding their lived experiences of engaging in critical consciousness: (1) noticing and commenting on systems of oppression and (2) describing responses and strategies in connection to instances and patterns of injustice. Within the theme of noticing and commenting on systems of oppression, three sub-themes included (a) gender socialization, (b) classism, and (c) racism. Within the theme of describing responses and strategies in connection to instances and patterns of injustice, analysis revealed four sub themes: (a) responding to discomfort, (b) critiquing/distancing, (c) stopping, and (d) feeling blessed. These themes and sub-themes represent teacher candidates’ lived experiences of engaging in critical consciousness, primarily focused on critical awareness, critical reflection, and critical analysis. Implications for developing equity-oriented and responsive middle grades teacher education are provided. Full article

Against a backdrop of calls for increased access and participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) in the United States have emerged as critical access points for Latina/o/x and other Students of Color. Federal grants can become important levers for building institutional capacity for broadening participation in STEM and transforming HSIs toward better serving Students of Color, specifically as it relates to curricula and pedagogy. In this study, we focus on the engineering faculty at an HSI who are participants in a National Science Foundation-funded, equity-focused professional development program. Operationalizing Bonilla-Silva’s color-evasive racial ideology framework, we use content analysis techniques to explore how engineering faculty discuss race and racism as part of the professional development experience. First, we find that engineering faculty largely rely on color-evasive racial frameworks (i.e., abstract liberalism, minimization of racism) when describing their motivations for participating in the program. Moreover, we find that engineering faculty responses depict a range of surprise and familiarity when reflecting on issues of race and racism. Finally, regardless of prior exposure to module concepts, at the end of the program, the majority of action projects reflect a recognition of race and racism as important. Full article

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields have remained stagnant in increasing diversity. An important factor in increasing diversity is building and supporting diverse cohorts of future STEM professionals in our classrooms. A strong sense of belonging in STEM has been demonstrated to increase persistence of women, underrepresented minorities, and first-generation college students in STEM or the college atmosphere. Therefore, it is important that STEM faculty develop inclusive teaching strategies to increase and support this sense of belonging in STEM for all students. This work evaluates a faculty-developed assignment implemented in Fall 2020 at a liberal arts college on a student’s sense of belonging in STEM. The results demonstrated that this semester-long project increased students’ sense of belonging in STEM. Current literature about any faculty-developed assignments focused on supporting a student’s sense of belonging and awareness of diversity in STEM implemented in chemistry courses is limited. This work represents a new approach grounded in inclusive pedagogy that can be utilized in addition to other institutional and departmental support structures to increase diversity and equity in STEM. Full article

Concurrent enrollment refers to partnerships between postsecondary institutions and schools through which secondary school students can complete a university class taught by a qualifying secondary school teacher at their secondary school. We propose that concurrent enrollment programs are an under-recognized tool for extending the impact of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The context of our study is an equity-focused university course in algebraic mathematical modeling that is also offered through concurrent enrollment in over 30 secondary schools to over 800 secondary students annually in our state of Minnesota, U.S.A. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of secondary school teachers’ experiences implementing the inquiry pedagogy and the equity goals of the course. Several results are important for UDL. Teachers (1) describe equity in social terms of race, ethnicity, income, immigration, and language status in addition to measures of academic success; (2) perceive improvements in students’ attitudes towards mathematics, school, and university education; (3) perceive student academic growth through mathematical writing; and (4) report close relationships with students. If higher education faculty design their on-campus classes to incorporate UDL principles, concurrent enrollment offers the potential to improve inclusive pathways from secondary schools to universities. Full article