Education
Genesis Santos, Genesis_Santos2@baylor.edu
Baylor University, with TERC NSF REU Dr. Smirla Ramos-Montanez & Dr. Scott Pattison
Education
Highlighting Latine Family STEM Talk and Beliefs through Early Childhood STEM Learning Programs
STEM education systems can change to support the assets of Latine families and learning from families must be the starting point. Emerging studies suggest that experiences with STEM in early childhood provide a critical foundation for long-term STEM-related engagement and career pathways. At this early age, talking with family members about STEM topics has been shown to contribute to STEM identities and exploring different ways of engaging with STEM (Dou et al., 2019). However, more research is needed to understand the nature of this talk within families and how it supports aspirations within specific fields, especially for Latine families with young children. In this study, we examined the beliefs that Latine families had before and after participating in early childhood engineering programs with their children and how they may utilize STEM talk to raise awareness of and develop interest in various STEM fields. To further investigate this, we conducted in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with three Latine families that participated in early childhood engineering programs. We used a Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) framework as a general approach for STEM talk. By the end, we hope to highlight the ways early childhood engineering programs can engage STEM talk within Latine families and their assets that support their children’s STEM interests. This work will lead to new research on the significance of early childhood, family-based engineering programs and how STEM talk manifests among families. This research will increase awareness of asset-based approaches among researchers, educators, and practitioners when working with Latines.
Drayton Willey, dwilley@emporia.edu
Emporia State University, with Dr. Amanda Lickteig
Secondary Social Science Education
Culturally Responsive Teaching Materials in Secondary Education Social Science Courses
Culturally relevant teaching practices are developing in secondary schools in the United States as a response to the growing diversity of students’ cultural backgrounds. Moreover, culturally relevant social science courses provide a unique opportunity to empower learners to change the conditions of themselves and their community for the better by relating the lessons of history and civics courses to their own lives. Therefore, the cultural relevancy of materials used in class to instruct students has become a pertinent measurement of a successful lesson plan. However, the requirements of materials in terms of cultural relevancy and educational institution’s measurement of used materials has lacked study and analysis. This constructivist, qualitative research aims to determine the how culturally responsive teaching materials are represented in five secondary social science courses in textbooks, videos, and lesson plans across forty-six purposively selected materials and score them using a rubric to determine their adherence to culturally responsive principles. This research finds that secondary, social science materials are inadequately culturally responsive to all subjects, textbooks, videos, and lesson plans. Further research is recommended to compare the responsiveness of materials which are intended to be culturally responsive to those which are not, and research which analyzes the effects responsive and unresponsive materials have when used in observed classrooms. This research offers the opportunity to direct secondary social science materials towards more culturally responsive modifications.
Nadia Cook, Ncook299@mail.SNU.edu
Southern Nazarene University, Dr. Kim Rosfeld
Education
Perceptions of Elementary School Teachers of Differences in Teaching and Learning After the Covid-19 Pandemic
This study explored public school teachers' perspectives and experiences on the differences in teaching and learning after the Covid-19 pandemic. In this study, qualitative data were collected from interviews with six teachers over Zoom. The interview questions focused on teachers’ perspectives of how the classroom has changed as well as teachers’ and students’ social-emotional well-being as well as the students. The major themes faced by teachers during the pandemic that were found throughout the series of interviews were that having smaller class sizes helped to be able to get the content in the classroom across during the pandemic. Also, every teacher that was interviewed brought up the app Seesaw to help get video lessons and assignments to the students. Teachers reported negative effects as well with a lack of student participation and engagement, a lack of support from principals and administrators, no work-life balance, and challenges related to learning new technology.