This Project Team's goal is to develop a strong perspective about how to raise educator awareness of bias in STEM classrooms, explore its effects, and interrupt it. Their members include the Charles A. Dana Center, Agile Mind, Center for Children and Technology, Mills College School of Education, National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity, Summit Trail Middle School, and Teach For America.

Culturally-responsive classrooms promote a sense of belonging among students and enhance their self-perceptions as successful learners. Although there is significant research on preparing teachers with instructional strategies for diverse students, there are still teacher attitudes and beliefs that resist embracing and building upon the cultural, racial/ethnic, and gender diversity in our nation’s classrooms. Research shows that many teachers engage in deficit-based and fixed-mindset thinking about their students, often due to social biases they may not even be aware of holding. 

This team aimed to support educators in taking actions in their classrooms that promote students’ identities as STEM learners who know that they belong and that they can excel in STEM classrooms. In their report, the team developed a perspective about effective professional growth materials, resources, and experiences that engage educators in research and practices that address and interrupt bias by exploring key concepts behind biased classroom interactions and the outcomes that can result.