scholarly journals Out of School and into STEM: Supporting Girls of Color through Culturally Relevant Enrichment

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jemimah L. Young ◽  
Jamaal R. Young ◽  
Noelle A. Paufler
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Teacher Leaders ◽  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Culturally Relevant Teaching ◽  
Girls Of Color ◽  
Stem Pipeline ◽  
Sociopolitical Consciousness ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Opportunity Gaps ◽  
Stem Dispositions

Increasing the participation of girls of color in the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is a national concern. Due to the persistence of achievement and opportunity gaps, sustaining positive STEM dispositions in girls of color is critical to diversifying the STEM pipeline. Enrichment activities can serve as a means to address persistent gaps in opportunities to learn. The purpose of this article was to explain how teachers could adapt traditional STEM enrichment activities to support girls of color through culturally relevant instructional practices. The three components of culturally relevant pedagogy are utilized to example how to adapt traditional activities to support girls of color in STEM. Examples are presented to foster (1) academic success, (2) cultural competence, and (3) sociopolitical consciousness in girls of color. Greater opportunities for STEM professional development, especially those that help teachers build upon culturally relevant teaching, are needed for both pre- and in-service teachers who desire to serve as teacher leaders in STEM. Implications and suggestions for teacher leaders are presented throughout.

More than a babysitter: Looking back on an effective summer enrichment program

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benterah Morton ◽  
Kelly Byrd ◽  
Elizabeth Allison ◽  
Andre Green
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Summer Programs ◽  
Summer Camps ◽  
Fifth Grade ◽  
Fifth Grade Students ◽  
Summer Enrichment ◽  
Enrichment Program ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
Summer Enrichment Program ◽  
Opportunity Gaps

Each summer families across the globe send their children to summer camps and daycares for what amounts to babysitting. This study takes the discussion beyond babysitting and explores a unique summer enrichment program offered to rising second through fifth grade students in a modified enrichment camp model. During the four-week program, students were engaged in standards-based academic instruction in reading, mathematics, and science designed to provide enrichment activities to better prepare them for academic success in the upcoming year. Students were pre-tested over standards from the first quarter of the upcoming year. Then, they were taught the standards and post-tested. Analysis of the pretest and posttest data suggests that the program was successful in increasing students’ content knowledge in each of the subject areas taught. The findings imply that summer programs intentionally offering standards-based academics in an enrichment camp environment can be used to provide learning opportunities that diminish academic opportunity gaps.

They Schools: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy under Siege

2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camika Royal ◽  
Simone Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Cultural Competence ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy ◽  
School Environment ◽  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Academic Excellence ◽  
Sociopolitical Consciousness ◽  
Relevant Pedagogy

Background/Context Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) represents educators who work toward academic excellence, cultural competence, and sociopolitical awareness. Although some profess to embrace CRP, many educators neglect sociopolitical consciousness. Socio-politically unconscious and/or racially dysconscious educators cannot engage their students in sociopolitical consciousness. For a multitude of reasons, including neoliberal school reform, educators may reduce CRP to cultural celebration, trivialization, essentializing, substituting cultural for political analysis, or other compromised pedagogies. Purpose In this article, we argue that neoliberal school reform models employing hyperaccountability and hyperstandardization, replete with their demands on educators of conformity and silence, obfuscate teachers as thinkers, disempowering the efforts of culturally relevant educators and making high test scores the sole focus of schooling. We also argue that CRP is even more needed now, especially its focuses on cultural competence and sociopolitical consciousness, given the recent highly publicized murders of Black youth (e.g., Freddie Gray, Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, and Renisha McBride). Setting and Population This article explores CRP in Philadelphia's public schools before and after the state takeover in 2001 and the proliferation of hyperstandardization, hyperaccountability, and neoliberal school reform. Research Design: This article is conceptual. It uses the historical narratives of Black educators to support the conceptual argument. Conclusion Though it is a professional gamble, it is possible to be a culturally relevant educator within the hyperstandardized, hyperaccountable neoliberal school environment. Such educators must be highly skilled masters of their craft, strategic, and subversive, adhering to all tenets of CRP and mandated curricula. This tension could affect educators’ professional standing, income, and job security. However, neglecting emancipatory pedagogies under the joint siege of hyperaccountability, hyperstandardization, and neoliberal school reform reifies the American racial, cultural, and socioeconomic caste system, and it does so through our schools. Unless educators risk subversively employing CRP, students from historically marginalized communities will continue to appear as standardized failures.

Enhancing Informal Stem Learning Through Family Engagement in Cooking

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 119-133
Author(s):  
Bradley J. Morris ◽  
Shannon R. Zentall ◽  
Grace Murray ◽  
Whitney Owens
Keyword(s):  
Informal Learning ◽  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Stem Learning ◽  
Natural Supports ◽  
Culturally Relevant Practices ◽  
Family Based ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Informal Stem Learning

Informal learning has the potential to play an important role in helping children develop a life-long interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The goal of this review is to synthesize the evidence regarding the features of effective informal learning, provide effective ways to support learning within these contexts, and illustrate that cooking is an optimal opportunity for informal STEM learning. We review evidence demonstrating that the most effective informal learning activities are authentic, social and collaborative experiences that tap into culturally-relevant practices and knowledge, although there are limitations to each. We propose that cooking provides a context for authentic, culturally-relevant learning opportunities and includes natural supports for learning and engagement. Specifically, cooking provides many opportunities to apply STEM content (e.g., measuring and chemical reactions) to an existing foundation of knowledge about food. Cooking is also a family-based learning opportunity that exists across cultures, allows for in-home mentoring, and requires no specialized materials (beyond those available in most homes). It may help overcome some limitations in informal STEM learning, namely scalability. Finally, cooking provides immediate, tangible (and edible) results, promoting interest and supporting long-term engagement.

The Longitudinal Effects of Kindergarten Enrollment and Relative Age on Children's Academic Achievement

2013 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
ÜmmüHan YeŞİl Dağli ◽  
Ithel Jones
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
School Readiness ◽  
Family Characteristics ◽  
Kindergarten Children ◽  
Third Grade ◽  
Relative Age ◽  
Parental Decision Making ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Kindergarten Enrollment ◽  
Reading And Mathematics

Background Research findings suggest that there may be some academic benefits for those children whose kindergarten enrollment is delayed, and the risk of underachievement seems to be greater for children who are younger when they first enter kindergarten. Although kindergarten enrollment occurs naturally, certain child, family, and childcare factors will likely influence parents’ decisions concerning when to enroll their children in kindergarten. Age-of entry studies have often neglected assignment bias results from those preenrollment factors. In addition, prior research has defined children's relative age outside of the immediate environment, as opposed to conceptualizing relative age within the context where children actually learn. Purpose This study examined the relationship between early, on-time, or delayed kindergarten enrollment and children's mathematics and reading achievement from kindergarten through third grade. We predicted that the degree to which delayed, on-time, or early enrollment influences children's reading and mathematics achievement depends on those preenrollment factors that potentially create assignment biases and the relative age of each child to his or her classmates. Research Design The study used the Early Childhood Longtudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS:K). A propensity score stratification model was used to adjust for sample assignment bias resulting from the preenrollment factors. Then, a cross-classified random effects model was applied. Results Results showed that certain child and family characteristics and parents’ perceptions about school readiness were related to when children first enter kindergarten. After controlling for demographic characteristics and propensity scores resulting from pre-enrollment factors, on average, at the beginning of kindergarten, children whose kindergarten enrollment was delayed had the highest scores in reading and mathematics, followed by children who entered kindergarten on time. Yet, in third grade, these differences were negligible. However, children in the delayed group who were also relatively older than their peers outperformed the other groups in third-grade mathematics. Conclusions The results suggest that the academic success or failure of children whose kindergarten enrollment is delayed, early, or on time depends on sociodemographic factors as well as the ages of the children in the same class (e.g., child's age relative to his or her classmates). Policy discussions about age of kindergarten entry or changing cutoff dates should include consideration of factors that influence parental decision making, as well as a child's age relative to his or her classmates.

Best Practices for Growing the STEM Pipeline for Women

2020 ◽  
pp. 182-201
Author(s):  
Julie C. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
College Women ◽  
Education System ◽  
Minority Women ◽  
Stem Fields ◽  
System A ◽  
Stem Pipeline ◽  
Collegiate Experience ◽  
And Mathematics

In today's fast paced education system, a huge emphasis has been placed on increasing the number of women who want to enter college studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Many holistic interventions, particularly in engineering happening during the high school years, are already seeing results with college women investigating roles in engineering at a higher rate than in the past. However, the initial success they are experiencing in traditionally male-dominated STEM fields is not manifesting itself long term. It is clear that more strategies are needed to place women in the position to be more confident entering the workforce in all STEM fields especially engineering. This chapter will look at the innovative ways mentoring is being used during the course of a student's collegiate experience to keep women invested in the STEM fields and how more needs to be done in this area particularly for our minority women in order to grow the STEM pipeline permanently.

Backpack of Whiteness: Releasing the Weight to Free Myself and My Students

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (6) ◽  
pp. 937-962
Author(s):  
Shashray McCormack
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Culturally Relevant Teaching ◽  
Internalized Racism ◽  
Black Teacher ◽  
Self Worth

This essay decenters whiteness and centers who I am as a Black teacher weighed down by boulders representing the dominance of whiteness and internalized racism as well as the institutional and social systems within which I dwell. Slowly, I release them through partnerships, “remembered” histories, “re-righted” curriculum, and confidence in self-worth. While I write about degradation, marginalization, disrespect, and omission of my Blackness in relationships with universities, I also write about supportive partnerships with Professional Dyads of Culturally Relevant Teaching (PDCRT) Colleagues of Color, administrators, and students emphasizing that, at the end of the day, the partner I must hold onto first is me.

Obstacles and opportunities for networked practice: a social network analysis of an inter-organizational STEM ecosystem

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi-Hwa Liou ◽  
Alan J. Daly
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Geographic Region ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Stem Pipeline ◽  
And Mathematics

PurposeThis study responds to major administrative and policy priorities to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education by investigating a multi-sector ecosystem of regional organizations that support a STEM pipeline for education and careers.Design/methodology/approachWe use social network analysis to investigate an entire region within a geographic region of California which included 316 organizations that represent different stakeholder groups, including educational institutions (school districts, schools and higher education), government, private companies, museums, libraries and multiple community-based organizations. This STEM ecosystem reflects a systems-level analysis of a region from a unique social network perspective.FindingsResults indicate that organizations have a surface-level access to STEM-related information, but the deeper and more intense relationship which involves strategic collaboration is limited. Further, interactions around information and collaboration between organizations were purportedly in part to be about education, rarely included PK-12 schools and district as central actors in the ecosystem. In addition, while institutions of higher education occupy a central position in connecting and bridging organizations within the ecosystem, higher education's connectivity to the PK-12 education sector is relatively limited in terms of building research and practice partnerships.Originality/valueThis research has implications for how regional-level complex systems are analyzed, led and catalyzed and further reflects the need to intentionally attend to the growth of STEM networks.

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