Anti-Deficit Learning and Teaching: A Community Learning Project Centering Race, Gender, and Mathematics

亚利桑那大学是一家西班牙裔服务机构，该项目旨在通过改革本科数学教学来服务于国家利益。为了做到这一点，它打算创造积极的学习环境，支持所有学生，特别是那些来自STEM中尚未公平代表的群体的学生。作为一个机构和社区转型项目，它将把本科生、STEM同伴导师、数学研究生和教学人员聚集在一起，相互支持对方的学习。项目的组成部分包括关于研究性学习和反赤字教学的讲习班、暑期桥基础微积分和微积分讲习班、关于STEM中种族和性别的关键对话、教师学习社区以及由教员领导的学生面试。对反赤字教学法的关注回应了STEM教师专业发展的迫切需要，该专业发展关注与种族和性别有关的问题。预期的项目结果包括教师教学实践的转变，他们对学生的看法，以及他们对如何挑战系统性不平等的理解。该项目回应了对社区专业发展项目研究的迫切需求，这些项目优先考虑STEM中代表性不足的人群中的本科生。该项目的研究计划将调查社区学习过程对教师教学的影响。以设计为基础的研究方法和过程评估将支持项目活动的实施，并询问关键设计原则，以支持获奖期间的设计改进。该项目将考察为许多代表不足的少数族裔学生服务的课堂上的探究式学习实践。通过从知识研究基金中采用“教师作为民族志研究者的方法”，教师将参与大学文化中心的批判性对话，并对学生进行个别采访。这些活动将帮助教师提高对相关社会和政策问题的认识，这些问题影响到他们的学生、他们的教学和整个大学。书面反思和调查，以及焦点小组和个人访谈，将记录教师的发展过程。该项目有可能改善学习环境，特别是对代表人数不足的群体的学生，并发展未来的变革推动者，以设计和提供公平的教学。NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型轨道，该计划支持高等教育机构和学科社区转变和改进STEM教育的努力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project at University of Arizona, a Hispanic Serving Institution, aims to serve the national interest by transforming undergraduate mathematics teaching. It intends to do so by creating positive learning environments that support all students, particularly those from groups that are not yet equitably represented in STEM. As an Institutional and Community Transformation project, it will bring together undergraduate students, STEM peer mentors, mathematics graduate students, and instructional faculty to support one another’s learning. Project components include workshops on Inquiry Based Learning and anti-deficit teaching, summer-bridge Precalculus and Calculus workshops, critical conversations about race and gender in STEM, a Faculty Learning Community, and faculty-led student interviews. The focus on anti-deficit pedagogy responds to a critical need for STEM instructor professional development that attends to issues related to race and gender. Expected project outcomes include shifts in the instructors’ teaching practices, their perceptions of students, and their understanding about how to challenge systemic inequities. The project responds to a critical need for research on community-based professional development programs that prioritize undergraduate students from populations that are underrepresented in STEM. The project’s research plan will investigate the impacts of the community learning process on instructors’ teaching. Design-based research methods and process evaluation will support implementation of the project activities and interrogate critical design principles, to support design improvements over the award period. The project will examine Inquiry-based Learning practices in classrooms that serve many underrepresented minority students. By adapting the “teachers as ethnographers method” from Funds of Knowledge research, instructors will participate in critical conversations at the university’s cultural centers and conduct individual interviews with students. These activities will support instructors’ development of awareness of relevant social and policy issues that affect their students, their teaching, and the University as a whole. Written reflections and surveys, together with focus-group and individual interviews, will document the instructors’ developmental processes. The project has the potential to improve the learning climate, especially for students from underrepresented groups, and develop future change agents to design and deliver equitable teaching. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.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.