“What Are We Missing?”: Examining Culturally Relevant Teaching Practices in STEM Educator Preparation Programs

Introduction

Despite efforts to bolster the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) career pipeline, underrepresentation of marginalized groups such as women and People of Color persists (National Science Board, 2016). For instance, in 2018, a disproportionate percentage of bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering were earned by students of Hispanic or Latino descent (15.1%), by Black students (8.5%), and by students of Indigenous group origin (0.4%) (Bock, 2022). In 2019, although women made up 48% of the workforce, women made up only 27% of the STEM workforce in the U.S., and the percentage of women of color in the STEM workforce was even lower (Martinez & Christnacht, 2021). Moreover, there is an overall drop in STEM career interests in adolescents (Henry, 2018), and this disinterest is only exacerbated by inequitably dispensed opportunities for historically marginalized students to take STEM courses in their P-12 journey (Crabtree et al., 2019; Casto & Williams, 2020). The large-scale change in student dispositions towards STEM threatens to widen the gap between STEM labor demand and qualified STEM workers (Vilorio, 2014). Thus, it is imperative to reinvigorate and improve educational practices in STEM fields (Litzler et al., 2014). To this end, providing high-quality instruction and hands-on experiences with research-based practices to elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) in Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs) is essential (McClure et al., 2017). Furthermore, providing PSTs’ with a strong foundation in culturally relevant pedagogy in their STEM methods courses allows an avenue to mitigate the leaky STEM pipeline and make STEM learning accessible and engaging for all students. Currently, EPPs seek to bridge gaps in PSTs’ STEM knowledge and skills by immersing students in interdisciplinary learning activities using models such as inquiry learning, engineering design, problem-based learning, and project-based learning. Participation in epistemic activities provides PSTs with firsthand experiences with contextualized-applied learning. Moreover, the STEM curriculum grounded in constructivism and social cognitive theory has positive effects on students’ STEM sense of belonging and persistence (Bell et al., 2017; Maiorca et al., 2021; Young et al., 2017). As the sociopolitical climate changes and the intersection of social justice and education becomes more pronounced, EPPs have a role to assist pre-service teachers in developing the knowledge and training necessary to work with students of color. To shift the trajectory of marginalized students’ involvement in STEM, EPPs must enrich their programs and courses with approaches that align with the lived experiences of students that teacher candidates are seeking to instruct. One such approach is culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP, Ladson-Billings, 1995).

While this framework has evolved over the last few decades, seeping into certain aspects of K-12 instruction (Paris, 2012), its presence in institutions of higher education and into EPPs remains barely visible (Schmid et al., 2016; Williams & Lewis, 2020). Research demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of CRP in K-12 classrooms (Abiola-Farinde et al., 2017; Herrera, 2017), which raises the question; are EPPs immersing pre-service teachers in methods course that blend national standards and CRP authentically? Thus, this study has two aims; to analyze nationally ranked EPPs offering of STEM methods courses to ascertain what STEM content is provided through course description; and determine to what extent these courses explicitly or implicitly insert aspects of CRP in these artifacts. Next, is a cogent literature review of EPPs responsibilities when offering method courses to pre-service teachers, followed by the conceptual framework which guides this study, CRP. We conclude with implications and recommendations of how EPPs can insert CRP into their STEM methods course with fidelity.