This paper describes the Problem-Solving Cycle model of professional development and the Mathematics Leadership Preparation model of PD leader preparation. These models form the backbone of our current research-practice partnership project in which we are working with a large urban district to adapt these models to develop district capacity to support the implementation of a middle school mathematics curriculum aligned with Common Core State Standards (CCSS). We highlight the central role of video in the Problem-Solving Cycle and our approach to preparing teacher leaders to use video-based discussions to understand student thinking and instructional practices. The first phase of the research was designed to identify how the models were adapted to support the district goals for implementing their new CCSS mathematics curriculum and to understand the reasons for the adaptations. The analysis of multiple data sources revealed two overarching categories of adaptations that we made to refine the models to better support the district goals: addressing district priorities and addressing teacher leaders’ limited experience. We made adaptations such as incorporating the district curriculum, addressing the needs of English learners, integrating the teacher leaders’ learning of the Problem-Solving Cycle model into the leadership preparation session, increasing the emphasis on what it means to be an instructional leader, strengthening the role of modeling and debriefing activities to support leadership development, scaffolding the selection of video clips, and incorporating the use of rehearsals and debriefing activities to support leadership development. The implications of this work illustrate the need for researchers to be responsive to the context of their school partners if they expect their work to be meaningful. Using the frame of design-based implementation research proved to be an effective strategy for working with the district STEM leadership team and teacher leaders to adapt the Problem-Solving Cycle and Mathematics Leadership Preparation models to support district implementation of a new curriculum that necessitates shifts in teacher practices and for determining how to make video-based discussions more productive activities in the models.

Digital game-based learning (DGBL) has the potential to promote equity in K–12 STEM education. However, few teachers have expertise in DBGL, and few professional development models exist to support teachers in both acquiring this expertise and advancing equity. To support the development of such models, we conducted a professional development to explore teacher acquisition of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge for games (TPACK-G) during a DGBL workshop series informed by culturally relevant pedagogy. This mixed methods pilot study used pre- and post-surveys and interviews to investigate shifts in teachers’ (n = 9) TPACK-G, perceptions of DGBL, and operationalizations of equity and cultural relevance. The survey findings showed increases in teachers’ TPACK-G, and corroboration between the surveys and interviews showed teachers’ expanded ideas about the range of applications of digital games in STEM education. However, the interviews revealed that teachers’ conceptualizations of equity and cultural relevance varied considerably.

The twenty-first-century economy has created an increasing demand for STEM education to prepare students for STEM careers. An emerging example is selective STEM high schools – institutions primarily focused on recruiting high-achieving students interested in pursuing and persisting in STEM fields. While theories of identity development have helped explain how students identify with STEM and how institutional factors relate to this process, further analysis is needed to understand the different contexts within which students who identify with and persist in STEM operate. This study analyzes how twenty-eight students who applied to selective STEM high schools conceptualized and identified with STEM in their first year of postsecondary education in the United States. Interviews were conducted with students who attended selective STEM-focused high schools and those who did not attend or had discontinued attending such schools. Using a phenomenological approach, we examined how students’ self-reported high school experiences relate to their conceptualization and perceptions of interest, recognition, participation, and competence in what it means to be a STEM person. Findings suggest that selective STEM-focused high school experiences gave students a more nuanced understanding of STEM fields. However, students also shared perceptions of incongruence with their interests perceived as unrelated to STEM, continuous stress and mental overload, and antipathy toward mathematics.

College STEM curricula that depict scholars with marginalized identities could benefit students by disrupting pervasive and harmful stereotypes. Textbook analyses suggest that this potential has not yet been realized. However, textbook analyses do not present a complete picture of curricula, which also include slide presentations, assignments, lectures, and other materials. Given the methodological challenge of capturing depictions of marginalized scholars across complete curricula, a survey of college STEM instructors—asking them to holistically evaluate depictions of diversity throughout their curricula—could provide a valuable complement to past textbook analysis research. We surveyed STEM instructors at large US universities (final n = 712 at 57 institutions), asking them to estimate the percentages of individual scholars depicted in their undergraduate STEM courses who are scholars of color, women, or LGBTQ + . We compared responses with the demographics of recent Ph.D. recipients in corresponding STEM disciplines using data collected by the US government through its Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), an annual census of Ph.D. recipients in the USA. Based on conservative interpretations of SED data and instructors’ estimates, we find undergraduate courses in biology, computer science, and engineering tend to under-depict scholars of color, while courses in agriculture, biology, and health sciences tend to under-depict women (compared to the percentages of scholars of color and women among recent doctoral recipients in these disciplines). Although the SED has to date gathered limited data about LGBTQ + identities, we find evidence that LGBTQ + scholars might be under-depicted as well, with the lowest rates of depiction in chemistry and engineering.

A growing body of evidence shows that positive student outcomes are associated with racial/ethnic diversity among university STEM instructors. However, few studies to date have been able to provide direct causal evidence identifying the specific mechanism(s) hypothesized to drive the benefits of instructor racial/ethnic diversity. Leaving these mechanisms unexplained may lead both receptive and critical readers to infer that race or ethnicity are somehow “natural” categories that “cause” such outcomes. In this narrative review, we eschew such racial essentialism in favor of an understanding of race as socially constructed, and use an ecological systems perspective to examine how multiple mechanisms of systemic racism operate inside and outside classrooms across multiple levels of analysis. Understanding how these mechanisms relate to each other, and how multiple interconnected mechanisms may drive the benefits of instructor racial/ethnic diversity, could inform the design of policies and practices to disrupt racism and advance equity. By integrating several bodies of psychological and sociological research on systemic racism in STEM and in higher education more broadly, we outline a multi-path model to explain how and under what circumstances STEM instructor racial/ethnic diversity may have particular effects on student experiences or outcomes. We use this model to generate predictions and recommend how researchers could test these predictions in future studies.