X-DBER 2021 Conference

Co-authors: Jared B. Stang, University of Calgary; Yulia Egorova, University of British Columbia; Christine Goedhart, University of British Columbia; and Karen M. Smith, University of British Columbia

Research shows that the social identities of students in STEM programs play a role in how they experience the classroom and consequently their intentions to persist in a discipline (e.g., [1]). Specifically, active-learning pedagogies rely on effective peer-to-peer communication and a supportive classroom climate. Our project aims to enhance equity across first-year biology, chemistry, and physics courses by investigating students’ affective experiences, identifying existing inequalities in our context, and finding how the classroom climate impacts these experiences. We are using a mixed-methods approach to explore students’ sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and perceptions of classroom climate in our disciplinary contexts to identify inclusive instructional practices. Our contributions to researching equity across STEM disciplines include a validated classroom climate assessment tool, a course affective outcome questionnaire, and a carefully designed demographic questionnaire. Our goal is to help STEM educators understand their student populations with respect to academic identities and explore how equity, diversity, and inclusion practices in the literature might translate into inclusive practices in their classrooms. In this talk, we share preliminary measurements of student self-efficacy and sense of belonging, and changes in these, over the course of a semester in different introductory science disciplines. This project is made possible by the UBC Equity and Inclusion Scholars Program and the UBC Faculty of Science Student Diversity Initiative.

[1] Eddy, S. L., & Brownell, S. E. (2016). Beneath the numbers: A review of gender disparities in undergraduate education across science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 12.2, 020106.