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��A Blueprint to Attend to �Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (J.E.D.I) �in STEM Curriculum

Dr. Melissa Haswell
Dr. Pat Marsteller
Dr. Ruthmae Sears

Representing the Accelerating Systemic Change Network Working Group on Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

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Resource Page

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For a copy of the slides, resources discussed in this talk, and book project information, please scan the QR code or go to https://www.smore.com/1bhek

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Padlet Activity

Scan the QR code or go to this link: https://bit.ly/3qhZfbg

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Our Mission

Equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice are foundational for effective higher education, an informed, engaged citizenry. This working group brings together communities whose work focuses on equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice in STEM higher education. This working group will explore the intersection of equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice with systemic change in higher education. We identify common ground, promote opportunities for collaboration, informed by lived perspectives from diverse stakeholders. We seek to be a catalyst for justice, diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM fields.

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We support this mission by focusing our work with administrators, educators, students, and communities in these areas:

Culture and Climate
Recruiting and Retaining Diverse Faculty
Policy
Curriculum change
Student Success
Leadership

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Our projects to discuss today

Book: Blueprint for Accelerating Change in Social Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Curricula

Aim: provide change agents, faculty, and faculty development practitioners with resources to address social justice issues in STEM by providing advice and examples of successful practice.

Resource Collection of Existing Resources
Grant for further Development of new resources

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Why now?

Diversity, inclusion, and equity as critical to the well-being of democratic culture.
Critical problems and issues from past policies and current wicked problems require an informed citizenry

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Mentimeter code: 4516 9709

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Our Justice Issues List

Health disparities
Climate justice
Environmental issues
Energy technologies
Artificial intelligence
Structural racism

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Metaphor of Mirror and Window

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Admittedly, our responses might have been influenced based on our lived experiences and our observations of the world around us.

Hence, the metaphor of the mirror and window can help to center conversations about once personal reflection and a broader worldview based on your positionality.

For instance, when we think about marginalized identities in S.T.E.M., consideration is often given to ethnic, racial, gender, linguistic, and socioeconomic groups, and the support offered to different groups can vary across institutions. Hence, in conversations about justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, which I refer to as J.E.D.I., it is important to reflect on how you can act locally while thinking globally to catalyze positive changes that promote equitable learning outcomes for all students.

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What Is Social Justice?

Access

Ensuring access to and the fair distribution of human and material resources in society.

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Participation

Creating equitable opportunities for people to access information to be fully participatory in decisions that affect their and others’ lives.

Human Rights

Acknowledging the rights inherent to each and every human being, regardless of race, sex, gender, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more (United Nations, 2006).

Empowerment

Supporting people’ s sense of agency in taking advantage of opportunities society affords as well as working toward eliminating all forms of oppression.

“Social justice means considering the contributions and right of each and every person in society across four ideas: access, participation, empowerment, and human rights (Berry et al, 2020, p.18)

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What Does It Mean To Integrate STEM and Social Justice?

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Teaching About Social Justice

Teaching about social justice recognizes and articulates issues that illustrate and raise concerns about societal inequities” (Garii & Appova, 2013, p. 198).

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Teaching In A Socially Just Manner

"Teaching in a socially just manner invites teachers to utilize pedagogical strategies ensuring equitable access to the course content” (Garii & Appova, 2013, p. 198).

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Teaching For Social Justice

“Teaching for social justice involves exploring concepts and ideas around pedagogy and content” (Russo & Fairbrother, 2009 in Garii & Appova, 2013, p. 198).

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Focus

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Features of Classroom for Social Justice

Normalizing Politically Taboo Topics
Creating a Pedagogy of Questioning
Developing Political Relationships with Students

(Gutstein, 2006, p.132)

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Features of the classroom that advocate for social justice in mathematics embody safe yet bold spaces in which political taboos are normalized; questioning strategies are readily utilized, and political relations with students are developed. Teachers should be prepared to take stands of solidarity with their students and their communities on inequities issues.

For instance, in recent times, "Critical Race Theory" in mathematics have been used in many political campaigns. According to Jett, Yeh, and Zavala (2022), and I quote, "Several myths, falsehoods, and misconceptions about C.R.T. are circulating within public discourse. These misconceptions are promulgated among parents, political leaders, and others who are attacking C.R.T. Misconceptions on what C.R.T. is have pushed some educators to avoid discussions of race solely to stay out of the controversy (Pollock & Rogers, 2022). The representatives in the anti-CRT camp have erroneously misplaced C.R.T. as the enemy. In no particular order, we address three prominent misconceptions and offer alternative framings of the underlying issues. "END OF Quote. Hence, the authors had to identify a particular taboo, address the misconception and reflect on ways to ensure inequities related to race are not overlooked, even when it may not be popular.

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Guiding Questions for What Matters

(Berry et. al, 2020, pp. 28)

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Benefits of �Teaching STEM for Social Justice

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Builds an informed society (Berry et al., 2019)

Help students learn to value mathematics as a tool for social change (Berry et al., 2019)

Connects mathematics with students cultural and community histories (Berry et al., 2019)

Develop sense of social responsibility in students (Voss & Rickards, 2016)

Positions students as co-constructers of mathematics (Gutstein, 2006)

Empower students to confront and solve real world challenges they face (Berry et al., 2019)

Allows students to engage in deep mathematical analysis of social issues (Harper, 2019)

Gives opportunity to center student voices (Harper, 2019)

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Responding To Backlash (Berry et al., 2020, p.38)�

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Pick

Pick battles carefully

Share

Share the rationale for integrating a social justice topic into the mathematics classroom

Avoid

Avoid sending lengthy responses through email

Avoid

Avoid responding from an emotional stance

Seek

Seek to understand others’ perspectives

Admittedly, conversations about the need to address social justice may not always be well received due to various factors. For example, "STOP WOKE efforts" or "Let's go back to the Good old Days", which often refers to periods of segregation and the prevalence of Jim Crow Policies that disenfranchised marginalized identities, is being shared in social media and in political campaigns.

Hence, knowledge is needed in responding to ensure progress is made. Thus, in addition to being mindful of state laws and policies related to schooling and education, in preparing for backlash, it will be helpful to seek to gain insight into differing perspectives and avoid responding from an emotional stance. Instead, draw on data and a common vision and illustrate how your efforts align with creating an inclusive and equitable culture. Avoid sending long emails. In addition to emails being public records and can be forwarded and misused, it is also void of tone and can create challenges in how it is being interpreted. Furthermore, be explicit and share your rationale for doing what you do, so you need to be able to state your "Why" for exploring the topic.

Finally, be sure to pick your battles carefully. Engaging in conversations about inequities and disparities within our disciplines can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. Hence, be sure to use your energies wisely, and network appropriately such that battles fought are worth it and can result in a better situation for all involved.

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Recommended Steps to Developing a Social Justice STEM Lesson�(modified from Berry et. al, 2020, p.257)

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Plan

Plan for reflection and action

Design

Design the student resources for the investigation

Create

Create a social justice question for the lesson

Determine

Determine how you will assess your goals

Establish

Establish your goals

Identify

Identify the content

Learn about

Learn about relevant social injustices

In developing lessons to teach for social justice, planning is needed. Thus, be sure to learn about the topic and historical trends that influenced current-day events. Additionally, be sure the foci of the discussion is content rich. So, make mathematics or biology content explicit. Furthermore, establish clear learning goals so that you can monitor any change in knowledge or dispositions and engage in further plan-do-study-act cycles to advance overarching goals stated within your change dashboard or logic models.

Assessment must also be considered. Remember, what gets graded gets valued. To include the likelihood that students demonstrate cognitive rigor about the topic being discussed time ought to be given for reflection and the creation of insightful samples of students work. Assignments can include portfolios, project-based learning activities, or problem-based learning activities.

Additionally, plan to use a social justice task to center the nature of the exploration. For instance, students may explore data relative to factors influencing social determinants of health, and housing disparities. The tasks can be low-floor high ceiling tasks, which allow everyone to access the task and connect real-world context to abstract phenomena. Students should also be encouraged to engage in opportunities to consider generalizable statements of claims made.

The design of the task and relevant resources should ensure students can access the information and engage in rich discourse. Thus, the organization of information and the clarity of information needs to be reviewed to ensure it can be accessed and understood by diverse learners.

Finally, plan to include opportunities for reflection.

Gaining insights into students' thinking and your own thoughts about the experience can help to revise future iterations of the course and the scaling up of efforts to advance a proposed change idea related to JEDI

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Instructional Strategies

(Berry et al., 2020, p.69)

Furthermore, in developing lessons to promote social justice, preconditions, conditions of teacher characteristics, and teaching strategies should be considered in your planning.

Preconditions should include having a culture and safe environment that values and respects the voices of diverse learners, and a positive student-teacher relationship should be established.

Educators should establish high expectations for all learners. For instance, I frequently start my class by stating: "I teach first-rate A grade teachers who ensure all students excel. Hence, I will remain committed to promoting my students and ensuring mathematical learning and equitable learning outcomes". Being emotionally aware of student needs and also caring about students is also important. Hence, it is important to provide a listening ear and ask questions rather than just make judgmental statements.

While during instruction, the activities used should be responsive and relevant to students' lives.

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The Book: Blueprint for Accelerating Change in Social Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Curricula

The book will aim to provide change agents, faculty, and faculty development practitioners with resources to address social justice issues in STEM by providing advice and examples of successful practice.
The book will define terms, justify the need for change, and provide practical knowledge for faculty including what self-reflection they need to do before embarking on this work.

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Call for Contributions to Book

Submit an abstract for a chapter:

Topic
Potential authors
Brief description of content (500 words)
Some potential literature sources
Why is this important to the overall book (circa 200 words)

Scan the QR code or go to the website below to submit

https://qubeshub.org/community/groups/blueprintbook

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Resource Collection

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A Few Current Examples�of Social Justice Learning Modules �

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Exploring Health Inequities and Redlining

Author: Mary Mulcahy

Activity: Working in small groups, students investigate patterns and relationships between historic redlining data and modern statistics.

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Assessing Socioeconomic Trends in Tree Cover and Human Health in Urban Environments

Author Tamara Basham

Adapted From: Redlining and Climate Change v1.0
Activity: Students use a combination of publicly available data and tree cover data that they generate using iTree Canopy to test whether tree cover is equitably distributed within the city of Dallas.

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Exploring EnvironmenATL Justice with Data Analytics and Visualization

Author: Ethell Vereen Morehouse College

Activity: Environmental justice is introduced to give students an understanding of tools and strategies to explore while developing advocacy and communication

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Examining Medical and Scientific Racism Using the Story of Henrietta Lacks

Author: Melissa Haswell

Activity: This is a semester-long project in which students read and discuss the story of Henrietta Lacks from multiple ethical perspectives.

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This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND.

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Some chemistry examples

Beyond Green Chemistry: Teaching Social Justice in Organic Chemistry: deliberately infusing social justice themes into the standard organic chemistry curriculum by discussing the history and social impact of key compounds

Other chem examples are found on the resource document

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What Is Equity?

The Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) defines equity as access to high quality learning experiences; inclusion for all learners, mathematics educators, and mathematics teacher educators; and respectful and fair engagement with others (university colleagues, preservice and in-service teachers, future teacher educators, and P-12 students). This means actively working toward a more just and equitable mathematics education free of systemic forms of inequality based on race, class, language, culture, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, and dis/ability.

(AMTE, 2015, p. 1)

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Dimensions of Equity

Access relates to the tangible resources that students have available to them to participate
Achievement involves, among other things, participation in a given class, course-taking patterns, standardized test scores and participation in STEM pathways
Identity dimension concerns itself with a balance between self and others. A window/mirror metaphor is useful here: that is, students need to have opportunities to see themselves in the curriculum (mirror), as well as have a view onto a broader world (window).
Power dimension takes up issues of social transformation at many levels.

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Four-Square Typology of Change Categories�(Henderson, Finkelstein, & Beach, 2012)

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Modification of the four-square typology of change categories framework to promote justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI) in mathematics Education �(Sears & Kudaisi, 2020)

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I modified the four-square framework and explicated specific examples that can be used to support the change process.

For instance, in disseminating curriculum and pedagogy, I sought to have students demonstrate competencies of mathematical content and effective teaching practices that attends to J.E.D.I. and is culturally responsive. Hence, I modeled the desired practice and dispositions. I also facilitated a focused lesson on teaching mathematics for social justice that described social justice pedagogical goals. The pedagogical goals include reading and writing the world with mathematics, developing positive social and cultural identities, and engaging students in critical conversations. We also reflected on the mathematics pedagogical goals, in which we discussed reading the mathematical word, succeeding academically in the traditional sense, and changing one's orientation to mathematics. We reviewed mathematical tasks that were socially conscious. Students considered mathematical models that can be used to make sense of the data or consider mathematical questions that could be posed. For instance, interpreting the COVID-19 data dashboard, reviewing mathematical problems that considered water crisis, food desert, regional equity report, and Florida schools' mathematical performance on Algebra 1. Additionally, J.E.D.I. was integrated into mathematical activities across the semester.

In developing reflective teachers, students were encouraged to reflect on the extent they considered J.E.D.I. in selecting tasks, enacted curriculum, and assessment measures. For example, students considered the diversity of individuals within textbooks or the extent they emphasized the contribution of diverse mathematicians. They were also asked to complete belief surveys and reflect on how their beliefs can influence their practices. Additionally, they frequently obtained feedback from their peers on their co-teaching presentation and reflected on how they can further support inclusive and equitable classrooms.

To develop policy, I revised the course syllabi that explicated assignments focused on J.E.D.I. Taking into account what gets valued, gets graded, students created lesson plans, videos, and submitted reflections that were graded that attended to J.E.D.I. in secondary mathematics.

Finally, students were encouraged to co-construct and create a CANVAS course to develop a shared vision that empowers and supports stakeholders to collectively develop environmental features that support teaching conceptions and practices that promote J.E.D.I. in mathematics.

Students worked in groups to develop CANVAS modules within the same course. The modules included mathematical content, assessment, technological tool integration, and an explicit attention to J.E.D.I. The students subsequently presented what they did, obtained feedback from their peers, and modified it as needed. Additionally, by observing what their peers did, students were encouraged to revise their modules to improve the overall course.

Hence, consideration was given to the change process and examples that can increase the likelihood that J.E.D.I. was interwoven into the course structure and culture.

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Change Agent

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