Introduction to Special Issue on Increasing Participation in Higher Education STEM Programs

This special issue highlights the work of several higher education practitioner–scholars who describe their approaches to facilitating participation in STEM courses and programs. Writing from the standpoint of chemistry, mathematics, and ecology in publicly supported universities, the authors discuss their pedagogical or curricular choices with reference to the broader structures and systemic considerations that sometimes limit and sometimes enable faculty effort. In this editorial, we reflect on the ways in which these authors invoke their own practitioner agency to establish equity-based innovations in higher education STEM settings.

Tensions in learning to teach English

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report findings from a study of preservice teacher (PST) beliefs about teaching English language arts (ELA). Design/methodology/approach A survey was administered to 56 preservice secondary ELA teachers at three universities to measure their beliefs about curriculum, authority and competition in schools. This study explores the beliefs of 17 of these PSTs who participated in an additional interview following up on six of the survey responses. Findings Although the survey forced a choice between various levels of agreeing and disagreeing, interview responses revealed that PSTs wrestled with tensions in what they believed about instructional and curricular choices. When describing situations that influenced their beliefs, they referenced situations from field placements, coursework and their own experiences as students. These tensions reflected the PSTs’ internally conflicting beliefs across their perceived binaries of teaching English. Originality/value This study suggests that these beliefs are formed in part by experiences in teacher preparation programs, particularly in field placements. However, even though PSTs recognized their internally conflicting beliefs, they understood them and their subsequent actions as dichotomous, rather than on a continuum. This study has implications for teacher educators; by understanding PSTs’ tendencies to understand their beliefs in binaries, teacher educators can provide reflective opportunities for PSTs to problematize these dichotomies and look for teaching identities and practices that are more nuanced.

Curriculum Deliberations over Time: A Nexus of Teacher Dilemmas, Questions, Experimentation, and Agency

This article examines 24 teachers’ perceptions of their curriculum and curricular choices over their first 11 years of teaching. Adaptive expertise and teacher visioning were used as a conceptual frameworks. A theme of diversity runs through the alternate route elementary teachers. Some of these teachers from diverse backgrounds promoted a social justice curriculum, but their teaching skills often lagged behind their goals for societal change. Eventually, on both the alternate route elementary and secondary levels, some of these teachers valued and implemented an integrated and interdisciplinary curriculum. The college-prepared teachers focused more on the creation of integrated learning environments on the elementary level and the adaptation of content to learning on the secondary level. Some of the college-prepared secondary teachers used more learning-centered approaches in all their classes from the start of their careers. Others were more influenced by the classroom context (the level of the class or the subject matter) and initially were more innovative in their beginning or “basic skills” classes than in their advanced classes. Most of the teachers in both preparation groups who remained in the classroom began to develop a sense of adaptive expertise.

Are They Using the Data? Teacher Perceptions of, Practices with, and Preparation to Use Assessment Data

<p>Teacher instructional and curricular choices should be informed by student level assessment<br />data; however, there is a dearth of empirical research documenting teachers’ perceptions, uses,<br />and preparation to use assessment data. To address this gap in understanding, we surveyed<br />teachers working in two public school districts in the western United States, resulting in a<br />sample consisting of 52 K-12 teachers. Our results revealed a number of relationships between<br />engaging in professional development, uses of assessment data, and perceptions of the value of<br />the data. We found a number of anticipated relationships, including that teachers who are more<br />comfortable using assessment data in their practice tend to feel less overwhelmed with using<br />assessment data. We also found several paradoxical relationships such as the more teachers<br />engage in professional learning communities the less they create and use common assessments.<br />Our research has a number of important implications for structuring teacher professional<br />development in ways that enhance effective use of assessment data by educators to inform their<br />practice. Our findings also provide a foundation for a deeper examination of teacher<br />perceptions of, uses of, and preparation to use assessment data.</p>

Creating a Critical Genetics Curriculum as a Counternarrative to/in the Urban Imaginary

I am explicating the neologism critical genetics as a site of curricular engagement for urban science students, acknowledging that schools and school systems are hierarchical structures that reflect a community’s social norms and practices. This critical and standards-based critical genetics curriculum interrogates and disrupts the deficit narratives for inner-city minority youth while helping students manifest skills that are crucial for college-bound science learners. I also explicate the curricular choices made in an attempt to help students participate in developing authentic counternarratives so that they could resist the racial determinism embedded in dominant narratives of school success.