The key to creating and sustaining inclusive learning environments is for educators to have an awareness of how student and instructor identities, intersect with historical and contemporary systems that yield experiences or opportunities that disadvantage some and advantage others. This disparity is especially important now as instructors are becoming increasingly aware of how one’s teaching practices may expand upon or inhibit their students’ sense of belonging in the classroom environment.
The Inclusive STEM Teaching Project is delivering content that pushes participants into a space of productive discomfort and challenges the need for continued dialogue around issues of identity, power, positionality and critical race theory in learning and teaching and in higher education in general.
Current and future faculty who participate in our professional development will learn and implement inclusive teaching methods in their STEM classes which will reduce gender and traditionally underrepresented minority disparities in performance and improve students’ sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and STEM identity. The content development team believes that this project will positively impact URM retention and degree attainment in STEM fields over time, and ultimately diversify our national STEM workforce.
We employ four innovative features to center identity and facilitate deep reflection:
- Embodied case studies
- Affinity spaces
- Local learning communities
- Inclusivity framework portfolio