Abstract
Advancing diversity in STEM requires competent and confident faculty and staff who can lead local professional development in inclusive teaching to improve classroom instruction and support all learners. This paper examines how a facilitator training model designed to promote inclusive facilitation impacted inclusive learning community facilitator self-reported confidence and practices. This mixed methods study reports on survey data from project trained facilitators (n=75) collected over four course runs. Facilitators reported significant increases in confidence, with the largest effect sizes in areas related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and identity. Qualitative findings indicate the training model effectively aligned facilitators with our approach to inclusive facilitation. Findings demonstrate that professional development in inclusive teaching, and by extension in other equity and diversity topics, can be successfully done at a national scale by centering identity, power, and positionality while upholding ‘do no harm.’ This paper provides a strategy for how DEI-focused faculty development efforts can select, train, and support facilitators on a national scale while maintaining high fidelity to project values and goals.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
We acknowledge Veronica Womack, Diamond Buchanan, Tazin Daniels, Schnaude Dorizan, Robin Greenler, Ivan Hernandez, Lisa Himelman, Patricia Jaimes, Stephanie Kusano, Tershia Pinder-Grover, and Sara Woods for contributing to the design and refinement of the facilitator training materials and the facilitator workbook referred to in this manuscript. We also acknowledge Ivan Hernandez and Lucas Hill for their contributions to the survey design. We acknowledge the support of all the now 400 and growing Inclusive STEM Teaching Project learning community facilitators. Their energy, commitment, engagement, thoughtfulness, and reflective and inclusive facilitation is an amazing contribution to their learning community participants and to inclusive teaching nationwide.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. (1821684, 1821571, 1821528, 1821510, 1821574). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Text was revised to meet the publishing journal's 7,000 word limit.