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“It’s worth our time”: a model of culturally and linguistically supportive professional development for K-12 STEM educators

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Abstract

Professional development on issues of language and culture is often separate from professional development on issues related to STEM education, resulting in linguistic and cultural gaps in K-12 STEM pedagogy and practice. To address this issue, we have designed a model of professional development in which we work with educators to build cultural and linguistic competence and to disseminate information about how educators view the relevance of language, communication, and culture to STEM teaching and learning. We describe the design and facilitation of our model of culturally and linguistically responsive professional development, grounded in theories of multicultural education and culturally supportive teaching, through professional development workshops to 60 K-12 STEM educators from schools in Maryland and Virginia that serve African American students. Participants noted that culturally and linguistically responsive approaches had yet to permeate their K-12 STEM settings, which they identified as a critical challenge to effectively teaching and engaging African-American students. Based on pre-surveys, workshops were tailored to participants’ stated needs for information on literacy (e.g., disciplinary literacies and discipline-specific jargon), cultural conflict and mismatch (e.g., student–teacher miscommunication), and linguistic bias in student assessment (e.g., test design). Educators shared feedback via post-workshop surveys, and a subset of 28 participants completed in-depth interviews and a focus group. Results indicate the need for further implementation of professional development such as ours that address linguistic and cultural issues, tailored for K-12 STEM educators. Although participants in this study enumerated several challenges to meeting this need, they also identified opportunities for collaborative solutions that draw upon teacher expertise and are integrated with curricula across content areas.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #1050938/1051056. Anne also recognizes the support of the National Science Foundation Grant #0930522, the US Department of Education Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow Program at the College of William & Mary, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs Preparing Inclusive Educators Program Improvement Grant #H325T090009, the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia SURN Visible Teaching, Assessment, Learning, and Leading (VTALL) Grants (2011–2015), and the Community Studies Professorship at the College of William and Mary. Christine further acknowledges the UMBC Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellowship (2013–2014), the UMBC Special Research Assistantship/Initiative Support (2010–2011), and the UMBC Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship Course Initiative Grant (2008). We thank all of the educators who participated in our professional development workshops, as well as our current and former students Erin L. Berry, Merci Best, Rachel Boag, Jerome Carter, May F. Chung, Inte’a DeShields, Adryan Flores, Aureanna Hakenson, Heather Hoskins, Mark Jamias, Rita J. Turner, Daniel Villarreal, and Adom Whitaker for their invaluable research assistance.

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  1. English, Education, Linguistics, and Africana Studies, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

    Anne H. Charity Hudley

  2. Language, Literacy and Culture Program, The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD, USA

    Christine Mallinson

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  1. Anne H. Charity Hudley
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Correspondence to Anne H. Charity Hudley.

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Charity Hudley, A.H., Mallinson, C. “It’s worth our time”: a model of culturally and linguistically supportive professional development for K-12 STEM educators. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 12, 637–660 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-016-9743-7

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