Summary

What I will gain most from this collaborative doctoral dissertation is that I will continually use my academic degree to address the ideologies that underlie and perpetuate the deficit perspective. I want to have real impact on public education via STEM. As I become well-versed in defeating deficit ideology, I will feel more comfortable in guiding teachers and educational leaders in this same

process. In terms of my professional development, I will continue to “spot” STEM-foundational thinking deficit ideologies within our school district (Gorski, 2010, p. 20). It is a continual, uphill process of reminding teachers not to identify various student problems as “cultural.” Personally, I am always trying to “reflect on [my] own class socialization” (Gorski, 2010, p. 20), which actually brought me to this doctoral program. However, the largest obstacle I will face is getting teachers in our district to not “refuse to attribute oppression as ‘problems of culture’” (Gorski, 2010, p. 20). For example, we have multicultural nights where the focus is on culture and not systemic anti-racism. I would much rather spend our time together discussing what Howe (1992) refers to as equal education opportunity.

The benefits of collaboration with local school districts and other educational organizations are extensive. However, for our school district, I see the following advantages (in relation to STEM-foundational thinking and students of color) as paraphrased by William Powell: (a) STEM foundational thinking, instructional activities, and STEM pathways become more accessible to all students, (b) increase of direct student-teacher contact time, (c) greater and more varied (culturally responsive) ways to check for understanding, (d) fewer student referrals to the principal’s office, and (e) professional and personal growth through shared reflection and ongoing feedback. For example, current STEM instruction is not equitable for students of color. “This predicament necessitates the creation of a counter frame for what it means to be both racially conscious and an effective teacher, to the benefit of all students” (Cobb & Haynes, 2016, p. 284). This counter frame is culturally responsive pedagogy. Students of color are currently being disproportionally referred to the principal’s office or the responsibility for these students is being passed to special education teachers. Current assessments are biased against marginalized students. Having conversations on STEM-foundational thinking, race, and student achievement will give teachers the tools they need to create meaningful relationships with their students of color. All of this is vital if we are to close the STEM opportunity gap.

Obstacles are to be expected, the largest one being resistance to changing the current system of privilege. My goal is to use this dissertation research as a vehicle for creating what Caine and Caine (1991; 1997) refer to as “relaxed alertness” or the “optimal state for reflection and learning (Powell). This work will be challenging, but I want teachers, instructional coaches, and other educational leaders to not feel fear of being criticized, or worse, being called a racist. Overcoming biases and understanding privilege and oppression bring about knee-jerk defensive reactions. However, in order to successfully raise student achievement you must be willing to talk about students, and “if you can’t talk about racial identity, then you can’t talk about [students of color]” (Singleton & Linton, 2006, p. 168).

          Institutional level. According to Henze, Katze, Norte, Sather, & Walker (2002), institutional racism is the sum of racial prejudice and institutional power. There are many different institutions where White racial knowledge in STEM operate. I have already discussed recommendations to provide more equitable STEM opportunities for students of color (see What next report). In order to disrupt systems of power and privilege, where STEM continues to be “only for White people” (Delpit, 2012, p. 14), I must continue working on the goals that I have set forth. I will push for deeper equity professional development within my own school district with topics in power dynamics, privilege, oppression, STEM-foundational thinking, and student achievement. Don Miguel Ruiz says:

Imagine living your life without the fear of being judged by others. You no longer rule your behavior according to what others may think about you. You are no longer responsible for anyone’s opinion. You have no need to control anyone, and no one controls you, either.
Imagine living your life without judging others. You can easily forgive others and let go of any judgments that you have. You don’t have the need to be right, and you don’t need to make anyone else wrong. You respect yourself and everyone else, and they respect you in return.
Imagine living without the fear of loving and not being loved. You are no longer afraid to be rejected, and you don’t have the need to be accepted. You can say, ‘I love you’ with no shame or justification. You can walk in the world with your heart completely open, and not be afraid to be hurt.
Imagine living your life without being afraid to take a risk and to explore life. You are not afraid to lose anything. You are not afraid to be alive in the world, and you are not afraid to die.
Imagine that you love yourself just the way you are. You love your body just the way it is, and you love your emotions just the way they are. You know that you are perfect just as you are (1997, pp. 124-125).

This is the life that I want to live. This is the life that I envision for my own children and the students learning within my school district. In life, we are all interdependent. As a society, either we all succeed, or we all fail. With this in mind, I will work to end injustice in all forms, while perpetuating social justice for everyone. Imagining is the first step toward action and social justice action requires not only imaging a world without oppression and privilege, but also imagining what that looks like when these things do not exist within us.

Recommendations for research

Current research needs to address two issues simultaneously: (a) How can one improve the performance of an elementary school (as an organization) through the use of sustained culturally relevant pedagogy to ensure that marginalized students receive a quality education, and that teachers develop a social consciousness that allows them to critique the basis of power and privilege in education? and (b) What are the components of elementary STEM opportunities to learn that foster interest, participation, and academic success in STEM foundational thinking and instructional activities, especially for marginalized students of color? Where our current research intended to focus on the latter, I believe that a more dynamic, longer-ranging study is necessary to understand the intersectionality of race, STEM foundational thinking, and systemic inequity. This could take the form of an inter-disciplinary study that uses mixed methods to study STEM foundational thinking. Doing so would give teachers and anti-racist school leaders tools that are backed by research in order to dismantle the current educational system both within their building and within their school district. I believe that future research should be grounded in the frameworks of Critical Race Theory, Culturally Responsive Education, adult learning, and STEM foundational thinking professional development design so that teachers can improve their pedagogy, thereby improving the quality of education for their students of color.

Although there has been much scholarship around the best practices surrounding the design and delivery of professional development (PD), adult and professional learning, evidence-based practices related to PD, thought leadership, online tools intended for more access and support, and equity and education (including Critical Race Theory), little has been done to combine these into a single, unifying professional learning approach in order to remove the academic disparities between racial groups within an elementary school setting (via STEM-foundational thinking). Most relevant to me is how discussing race among colleagues can have detrimental effects on a staff’s cohesiveness. These racial consciousness conversations about skin color, socio-economic status (SES), gender, and academic achievement need to come before any educational reform efforts. However, at times conversations around a students’ identity background and their perceptions of their own educational opportunities lead to unintended implications of racism on the part of individual teachers. Litowitz (1997) mentions “critics also worry that CRT’s emphasis on racism promotes ‘balkanization’ and racial divisiveness.” I have been witness to this in my own career as a teacher, educational leader, and instructional coach. I feel that the major reason a STEM inequity gap persists is because of a lack of open and frank communication between administrators, teachers, parents, and students about how different students learn, and the academic potential of traditionally underperforming students of color. We seem to recognize the need to differentiate instruction for our individual students’ needs; however, once the topic of race is added, people shy away from recognizing that students of different colors may learn differently (Cokley, 2003, p. 529) or are inhibited from learning based on systemic assumptions about their ability to achieve academic success.

Evidence-Based Leadership Strategies for Achieving Integrated STEM Foundational Thinking

Improving student achievement begins with evidence-based leadership strategies for improving the quality of instruction. Successful leadership (a) reinvents leadership practices to use a distributed leadership style, (b) organizes school supports for school improvement, and (c) turns schools into equitable centers of high-quality education. In the following sections, I will describe leadership
strategies that reflect current research on best practices for teachers and administrators. I will end with explaining how these interventions will produce significant gains in marginalized student achievement.

          Improved student learning through distributed leadership. Leadership projects, such as the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of Minnesota, have investigated links to improve student learning through leadership that focuses on “shared and contingent responsibility” and “on leadership exercised by those most directly responsible for student learning—principals and teachers” (Seashore-Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstom, & Anderson, 2010, p. 17). This distributed leadership philosophy has positive effects on teachers, students, and principals. For example, by creating an effective professional community, the staff creates a school climate that “encourages levels of student effort above and beyond the levels encouraged in individual classrooms” (Seashore-Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstom, & Anderson, 2010, p. 37). This is especially important for marginalized students because systemic levels of STEM privilege and oppression have caused these students to underperform in all content areas as compared to their White peers. By using professional development focused on STEM equity and racial consciousness, teachers will become STEM-foundational thinking facilitators and anti-racist leaders who instill the levels of trust necessary for increased student achievement in STEM content areas. Research indicates that “when the professional community focuses on the quality of student learning, teachers adopt instructional practices that enhance students’ learning” (Seashore-Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstom, & Anderson, 2010, p. 42).

          School improvement. STEM-foundational thinking and learning-focused leadership (a) means a “persistent, public focus at all levels of the system to improve the quality of instruction”, (b) invests in people and positions to enhance instructional leadership, (c) “reinvents leadership practice within schools”, (d) creates “differentiated, responsive relationships within schools”, and (e) uses evidence from many kinds of leadership work as constant reference points (Knapp, Copland, Honig, Plecki, & Portin, 2010). In order for professional development on race and STEM student achievement to be sustainable, closing the opportunity gap must be a priority at all schools, but especially within elementary schools where students’ learning experiences are more naturally integrated. This will require persistent focus from the classroom to the hallways, to the staff lounge, to the principal’s office; all levels of the system must be held accountable for closing this gap. Schools must invest in

this process by investing time, money, and in the teachers themselves. For example, successful professional development (e.g.: book study or STEM community cohort) require resources for teachers to use in exploring their own systems of privilege and oppression. This includes, but is not limited to staff meeting agenda time, books, substitute teacher pay for release days, individual grade level collaboration time, and guest speakers. By focusing on learning-focused leadership, the staff must identify and address problems of culturally insensitive instructional practice. To do this, requires STEM-focused teacher leaders to “model ways of thinking and acting [in a culturally-responsive manner]” and “developing and using tools in one-on-one assistance relationships” with marginalized students (Knapp, Copland, Honig, Plecki, & Portin, 2010, p. 14). Creating differentiated relationships within elementary schools, the principal must create “more responsive supervisor-teacher relationships inside the school” (Knapp, Copland, Honig, Plecki, & Portin, 2010, p. 15). For example, an instructional rounds model may work well for supporting this type of continuous professional development (Marzano, 2011; City, 2009). This would affect the way teachers are evaluated both formally and informally. Culturally responsive pedagogy must be a priority for all teacher evaluations. Finally, our professional development must use current data and evidence “provide continual feedback loops to teachers, teacher-leaders, and the school’s supervisory leaders” (Knapp, Copland, Honig, Plecki, & Portin, 2010, p. 17). Public schools are data-driven systems when it comes to content-area instruction; they must also be data-driven for anti-racist teaching and learning and STEM-foundational thinking.

Engaging others in the STEM-reform Effort

Engaging every staff member is essential for implementing this STEM reform effort to provide equal access and opportunities for STEM foundational thinking. Below I will define current research on collaborative research, and discuss the benefits and obstacles with these strategies.


          Collaborative leadership. Collaborative leadership “distributes power, authority, and responsibility across [a] group” (Anderson-Butcher, Lawson, Bean, Boone, Kwiatkowski, et al., 2004, p. 4). True collaboration require an interdependence “characterized by trust, norms of give-and-take, shared responsibilities, consensus-building and conflict resolution mechanisms, shared power and authority and shared information and decision-making systems” (Anderson-Butcher, Lawson, Bean, Boone, Kwiatkowski, et al., 2004, p. 2). Design principles and strategies for collaboration and collaborative leadership are numerous; however, here I will focus on three: (a) environment, (b) structure, and (c) purpose. Creating an environment of trust is the first priority for schools engaging in Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) professional development with a STEM-foundational thinking focus. Teachers must be willing to acknowledge their privileges and authority within the school system. Teachers must be willing to see systems of privilege and oppression clearly before they can analyze how the system works. The ability to compromise will be difficult for some, especially when denial of oppression is strong. Finally, in order to obtain our goal of closing these STEM opportunity gaps, teachers must be unified in that single purpose. Collaborative teachers must agree to this purpose before they can proceed. Research indicates that the use the professional development to illustrate how “commitment to the overall purpose will support their own interests” (Anderson-Butcher, Lawson, Bean, Boone, Kwiatkowski, et al., 2004, p. 9) is vital to sustainability. Collaborative leadership is definitely a team approach to solving school-wide inequity problems. There will be conflict, yet these conflicts must be handled tactfully so that teachers can get to the business of increasing the integration of STEM-foundational thinking in all content areas.