A Portland State University researcher says an overhaul of biology education is needed if more marginalized students are to pursue and persist in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields — and there is no better place to start shifting the culture of biology education than with graduate students who are current teaching assistants and future faculty.
A new federal grant led by PSU Associate Professor of Biology and Biology Education, Erin Shortlidge, aims to develop training for thousands of future faculty in intentional, inclusive, evidence-based teaching practices. Graduate teaching assistants have the potential to improve undergraduate STEM classrooms now — as they lead the vast majority of lab and discussion sections for introductory courses — and in the future when they become faculty members.
Shortlidge said that too often the emphasis in introductory science courses is about weeding out students rather than fostering interest. Overall, fewer than 40% of students who initially enroll as STEM majors graduate with STEM degrees, with women and students of color even more likely to switch majors. Students cite poor teaching and low grades in introductory STEM courses as well as the often unwelcoming and “chilly” culture of STEM courses as reasons for leaving STEM.
The hope for the grant is to holistically and intentionally modify teaching practices on a national scale to shift the learning environment towards being supportive of all STEM students.
“Mindful evidence-based teaching practices have the potential to increase student success and close the opportunity gap for students with marginalized identities,” Shortlidge said. “Although there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that engaging students through evidence-based strategies can increase student learning, success and retention, these practices are still vastly underused in STEM higher education.”
The $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation will support six “Evolving the Culture of Biology” workshops over the next four years. Teams of faculty, staff and/or administrators who are key players in the development of courses that rely heavily on teaching assistants for instruction will engage in a contextually rooted and reflective process to develop or hone existing teaching assistant teaching professional development programs at their respective institutions. Teams will remain engaged through ongoing learning communities and ultimately contribute to an online repository of resources that will be made publicly available.
The 180 workshop participants will, in turn, train graduate teaching assistants at their home institutions in contextually-rooted, inclusive, evidence-based teaching skills. The research team estimates that if a participant mentors an average of 15 TAs per term, and each of those TAs teaches an average of 43 undergraduates per term, then by project’s end, over 900 TAs across 60 institutions — and almost 39,000 undergraduate students per term — will have been impacted.
The project will include a longitudinal research component that measures the teaching practices, self-efficacy teaching identities of the workshop participants as well as the TAs who participate in reformed teaching professional development.
The research team includes Shortlidge; Stephanie Gutzler, director of undergraduate studies in biology at Georgia State University; Kaleb Heinrich, assistant professor at the University of Alabama; Star Lee, assistant professor of teaching at University of California Irvine; Adam Chouinard, a senior instructor at Oregon State University; Mitra Asgari, assistant teaching professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri; and Deborah Lichti, instructional consultant at the University of Michigan.
