Fostering More Accurate and Identity-Affirming Science Teaching and Learning at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

This project aims to serve the national interest by increasing and diversifying the STEM and healthcare workforce with individuals equipped with accurate and identity-affirming scientific knowledge and experiences. A team of faculty from Colorado State University, Florida International University, and Arizona State University will investigate how the norm of “neutrality” (i.e., not acknowledging the role of social identities and social contexts on science or the role of science on society) impacts undergraduate science teaching at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), how some instructors break free of this norm to teach identify-affirming content, and how this change impacts students. This work at HSIs is important because of the growing interest in how educators within HSIs are intentionally serving, rather than simply enrolling, students from minoritized backgrounds and attending to different subgroups within Hispanic/Latinx communities. Understanding how to support instructors to break with the norm of “neutrality” should create more welcoming environments for students with a range of identities and increase student belongingness, interest, and retention in STEM. This project plans to employ a mixed methods (interviews and surveys), multi-site case study approach at five HSIs. Three goals guide the execution of the project. The first is to characterize how undergraduate biology instructors at HSIs make decisions about if and how to include identity-affirming content in their courses and the various factors that influence these decisions. Second is to establish how identity-affirming content in biology impacts student experiences, such as belongingness, interest in biology content, and perceived content relevance. The third goal is to develop a survey instrument to capture student perceptions of the prevalence of different instructor approaches to biology instruction at HSIs. The project team will specifically focus on instructors’ use of identity-neutral or identity-affirming content in biology classes, and the impact this type of content has on students with minoritized identities. This project takes a novel research approach by examining instructors’ decisions regarding both content and pedagogy, a more holistic approach to understanding how instructors create identity-affirming environments. This project should advance understanding of how instructors make decisions about their pedagogy and course content in the context of HSIs. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.