Summary

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) live in the American imagination as promising tools for solving pressing global challenges and enhancing quality of life. Despite this promise, though, different communities have had starkly different experiences within these fields, rendering large swaths of the population unable to contribute to or access the benefits of these disciplines.

Further, STEM education in the United States is a deeply inequitable enterprise: opportunities to learn in STEM education are unevenly distributed, and the experiences an individual has in STEM education are likely to vary tremendously based on their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and a myriad of other factors. Many groups have been systematically locked out of participation in STEM education and the STEM workforce or have seen their contributions ignored or unrecognized. As a result, for a large swath of the U.S. population, personal or financial success in STEM is neither a reality nor a possibility. Moreover, the achievements of STEM in and of themselves have not always been universally good for everyone. Often, something that is considered a success in STEM for one community has had deleterious effects on another.

Recognizing both this troubling history and the promise and possibility of STEM education, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine through its Board on Science Education convened an expert committee to examine the range of issues associated with equity in preK–12 STEM education, identify promising approaches to advancing equity, and outline potential steps toward more equitable STEM education experiences for students. The committee examined evidence related to educational

equity and STEM education, engaged in four field engagements, and developed recommendations and a research agenda for the field.

The committee approached equity in STEM education not as a singular goal but as an ongoing process that requires intentional decision making and action toward addressing and disrupting existing inequities and envisioning a more just future. Given the specific histories and contexts of different schools, districts, communities, and regions, equity-related goals and the strategies for achieving them may vary substantially from place to place and may need to change over time.

The committee also recognized that the current context of STEM education is shaped by history, policy, and the decisions made by individuals throughout the education system over decades, if not centuries. From its inception, the American educational system has functioned to maintain social stratification and access to power and privilege, even while some individuals and communities have leveraged education to access opportunity. This means that many of the inequities in preK–12 STEM education observed today are not accidental, rather they are a deliberate feature of the system. As a result, advancing equity in STEM education requires intentional, sustained, coordinated systemic change that reorients toward recognizing the potential of all children and youth and promoting their success. Furthermore, the context of STEM education continues to evolve: even over the course of writing this report, the committee observed distinct political and cultural shifts in how equity issues in education are discussed and addressed. As this context changes, so too must decision makers adjust their thinking and actions in response.

THE CURRENT STATE OF STEM EDUCATION: LARGE-SCALE TRENDS AND INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCES

For decades, policymakers have turned to students’ scores on large-scale assessments as the main indicator of success or lack thereof in STEM education. Results from national and state-level assessments of performance in STEM subjects consistently document persistent achievement gaps across groups, despite accountability-based reform efforts that have been intended to address these gaps. Further, there are overarching patterns in achievement that show a strong association between school-level racial-economic segregation and achievement.

Achievement gaps alone, however, have limited utility and provide little insight into the sources of observed group differences in performance. Instead, it is important to also examine differences in opportunities to learn. Access to high-quality learning experiences in STEM disciplines is uneven across preK–12 education. While mathematics is available in some form throughout preK–12, tracking policies across the country limit

access to advanced mathematics coursework. On average, students in elementary grades rarely touch on science, computer science, or engineering coursework, and advanced coursework in secondary grades is unevenly distributed.

While these large-scale, population-level trends clearly portray the consequences of the inequitable education system, they do not provide a picture of the lived experiences and long-term consequences for individual children and youth. How social categories such as gender, race, social class, or disability status are understood by adults as well as peers can result in classroom processes, norms, participation structures, and interpersonal dynamics that send either positive or negative signals about who belongs or can be competent in STEM based on dominant assumptions. The resulting moment-to-moment interactions shape the individual experiences of children and youth with consequences for their learning, identity, and sense of belonging in STEM. Thus, understanding and addressing inequity in STEM education involves addressing both population-level trends and the individual and classroom-level interactions that contribute to them.

EDUCATION POLICY AND FRAMES FOR DECISION MAKING

The education system is organized across multiple levels, with policies and practices operating at the federal, state, district, and school levels. These policies and practices that unfold across these levels do so in four key domains that shape STEM education: curriculum and instruction, assessment, professional development for teachers and administrators, and pathways and opportunities (e.g., access to courses and programs). Addressing equity within the preK–12 system involves addressing policy and practices, as well as funding and resources, at each level across the different policy domains.

Education decision makers can find opportunities through interpretation and enactment of policy that allow them to advance equity in STEM education. Identifying these opportunities requires an understanding of the policies, the key actors in the context, potential resources to leverage, and a willingness to be creative. Consequential decision making for increasing equity in STEM education involves balancing short-term gains while maintaining a vision for and strategic action toward long-term, continuous and broad systemic change.

Currently, actors throughout the STEM education system implicitly and explicitly use different ways of thinking about equity and move between them. In order to move the system, actors within it will need to have a clear and consistent vision for equity to work toward. In an effort to help decision makers and actors across the system develop more explicit visions for

equity, the committee outlined five frames for decision making related to equity in STEM education.

Equity Frame 1: Reducing Gaps Between Groups emphasizes reducing gaps between different groups based on race, gender identity, or some other factor (e.g., social class). Those gaps might be related to interest in STEM, achievement, or representation within the STEM workforce.

Equity Frame 2: Expanding Opportunity and Access emphasizes eliminating differential access to high-quality opportunities in STEM. The source of those differences is typically imagined in terms of social and material resources necessary to learn—access to well-prepared educators, a network of adult and peer supporters for learning, and high-quality curricular experiences.

Equity Frame 3: Embracing Heterogeneity in STEM Classrooms emphasizes engaging with the concerns, lived experiences, and identities of students who have been and often continue to be marginalized in STEM education settings. It includes emphasis on the importance of embracing the different ways of thinking, feeling, and being of young people within STEM classrooms.

Equity Frame 4: Learning and Using STEM to Promote Justice emphasizes learning STEM as a resource within movements for social and socioecological justice. This can include engaging young people with STEM learning in ways that allow them to engage directly in actions that work toward remedying injustices experienced in their communities, or to contribute to larger justice projects.

Equity Frame 5: Envisioning Sustainable Futures Through STEM emphasizes a role for STEM education in cultivating equitable, just, and thriving social and ecological futures that attend to and support both ecological and human wellbeing. This frame is very forward looking including potentially re-imagining the structures and setting for schooling.

STRATEGIES FOR ADVANCING EQUITY

In order to provide guidance for educators and decision makers, the committee examined research and practice in the four major domains of policy and practice. Based on research and emerging educational practices, they outlined recommendations for action within each domain beginning with recommendations that guide leaders on setting a vision and agenda for advancing equity in STEM.

Recommendation 1: Stakeholders at all levels of the education system—including state, district, and school leaders and classroom teachers—all have roles as decision makers who can either advance equity or allow inequities to remain in place. Using the five equity frames as a guide,

decision makers should articulate their constituents’ and their community’s short- and long-term goals for equity and then make decisions about policy and practice oriented toward those goals.

Recommendation 2: State, district, and school education leaders and decision makers across both in- and out-of-school spaces should develop strategic plans for advancing equity in STEM education. These actors should

• Ensure that the specific histories and cultural contexts of impacted communities are represented in the decision-making process through intentional partnership and engagement.
• Establish mechanisms for input and feedback from impacted community members.
• Conduct an initial “equity audit” to identify patterns of inequity and to aid in prioritizing investments and changes in policy and practice.
• Articulate the relevant outcomes to track and design strategies to reach them.
• Collect ongoing data to document progress toward equity goals and inform ongoing improvement efforts.
• Identity problematic or harmful policies and practices and revise decisions as appropriate.

Assessment and Data

The current system for documenting the state of STEM education focuses primarily on student achievement on standardized test scores only. Current data are inadequate for documenting how policies and practices contribute to inequities and do not provide sufficient information to guide systemic changes that can address gaps in opportunity, access, and quality of experience.

Recommendation 3: In pursuit of assessment systems that support a vision of equity in STEM education, state departments of education should

• Establish new metrics for equity in STEM that are supported by research and go beyond student achievement, such as measurements of student experience and resource allocation related to those experiences.
• Develop systems approaches (e.g., portfolio-based approaches) to measuring the performance of districts, schools, and educators that reflect multiple measures beyond student achievement.

• Develop assessment policy that leverages the expertise and judgment of educators, while also developing their capacities, and enacts wider, more substantive views of student achievement.

Recommendation 4: In consultation with leadership from the state level, district leaders should implement balanced assessment systems that leverage multiple measures of equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics beyond student achievement.

Recommendation 5: Data on students’ learning opportunities and allocation of time and resources provide important information to guide education leaders and decision makers as they work to advance equity in STEM education. Districts should develop data systems that capture information about opportunity to learn including time for instruction, allocation of resources and funding, access to and enrollment in STEM courses, and qualifications and characteristics of teachers. These data should be disaggregated to examine trends for subgroups of students (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, disability status, language) and by school characteristics.

Learning and Instruction

Insights from sociocultural theories of learning have informed development of new approaches to STEM learning and teaching in school that emphasize engagement in disciplinary practices and the importance of learners’ interest and identity. These new approaches open up productive spaces for advancing equity. Inequities can be reproduced and/or disrupted and transformed through teaching and learning interactions and through the ways that learners’ sensemaking is recognized and cultivated or not. Cognitively rich and engaging tasks; well-structured supports; caring and supportive relationships; emotionally, culturally, and politically attuned forms of guidance; and opportunities for authentic sensemaking and multiple ways of knowing create the conditions for meaningful learning. Enacting instructional changes that promote equity will require changes in other school and district practices and policies to both eliminate barriers and encourage and incentivize instructional change.

Recommendation 6: In order to shift instruction in ways that advance equity in STEM classrooms, STEM educators in school and in out-of-school settings should

• Reflect on and interrogate routine instructional practices in STEM for how they may be providing (or limiting) opportunities for learners based on learners’ social identities.

• Implement instructional approaches in STEM that draw on asset-based perspectives, center students’ sensemaking as tied to their cultural and sociopolitical worlds, and frame STEM practices and knowledge as dynamic, evolving, and connected with other disciplines both within and outside of STEM.
• Work to recognize and disrupt inequities as they emerge in the classroom, including between students.
• Identify and leverage STEM resources in students’ families and in the surrounding community.
• When possible, join or establish professional learning communities within and across schools and districts in order to learn from and support each other.

Teacher Learning

Educators cannot be expected to make the necessary changes to instruction on their own. They need high-quality, ongoing professional learning opportunities related to equity in STEM. To enact instruction that advances equity in STEM requires understanding how to interweave pedagogy that supports the development of competencies in the concepts and practices of the disciplines with pedagogy that promotes learners’ agency, leverages their cultural and linguistic assets, and centers their competence as sensemakers. There are research-based models for advancing this kind of instruction that can be leveraged to support educators as they reflect on and transform their own practice.

Recommendation 7: High-quality, sustained professional learning opportunities are needed to engage teachers as professionals with effective, evidence-based instructional practices in STEM that advance equity. Such opportunities should provide support for teachers to reflect critically on their own instruction in STEM and try out new approaches in an iterative process over time.

• Designers and providers of professional development and coaching should design and implement professional learning experiences that draw on research-based models for advancing culturally responsive and sustaining instruction in STEM.
• Individuals with responsibility for selecting professional development providers (district administrators and other district leaders, school leaders) should develop rubrics for identifying high-quality professional development providers who can support teachers in developing equitable instructional practice and provide resources for teachers to engage in professional learning related to equity in STEM.

• School leaders (principals and instructional coaches) should allocate space, time, and support for teachers to engage in professional learning related to equity in STEM through both formal professional development experiences and through professional learning communities.

Recommendation 8: Teacher educators should provide preservice teachers with opportunities to learn about the history of inequities in STEM and in STEM education, reflect on their own experiences with and identities in STEM, become familiar with culturally responsive and sustaining instructional approaches, and implement equitable instructional approaches in STEM in settings where they can reflect on and improve their own instructional practice.

Partnering with Families and Communities

Families and communities are critical partners in preK–12 STEM education and they can play a variety of roles. The experiences that children and youth have in their families and communities can be rich resources for classroom learning. In addition, family members and community members can offer insight into the local context and history, may have STEM-related experiences and expertise to share, and can be valuable partners in developing STEM learning experiences that are grounded in issues and questions that are relevant to learners.

Recommendation 9: Advancing equity in STEM requires recognition of the assets of families and communities, and investments in the development of mutually beneficial partnerships between schools, districts, families, and communities.

• District and school leaders should develop strategies for engaging with families and communities that deepen leaders’ understanding of local context and history, build channels of communication, and nurture mutual respect.
• District and school leaders should allocate time and resources for teachers to build relationships with families and communities to allow them to deepen their understanding of local context and history and help them to appreciate and leverage family and community assets in STEM instruction.

Instructional Materials

Instructional materials can play a key role in supporting equitable approaches to STEM instruction and in either reinforcing narrow conceptions of the STEM disciplines or introducing more expansive conceptions. However, instructional materials are often not designed to incorporate explicit strategies for addressing equity beyond somewhat surface features such as ensuring a diverse array of individuals are represented or describing some strategies for differentiation of instruction. This makes selection and use of instructional materials a critical lever for advancing equity (or not).

Recommendation 10: In designing STEM curriculum, designers and developers of curricular and instructional materials should

• Include a diversity of designers (considering disciplinary perspectives, race, gender, ability, language, sexual orientation, geography) on their teams who share power and authority in the design process.
• Align materials to evidence-based instructional approaches in the STEM disciplines.
• Include a variety of modalities and ways of developing STEM knowledge and understandings that reflect diverse ways of knowing the natural and designed world through STEM.

Recommendation 11: State-, district-, or school-level actors who are responsible for the selection, adoption, and implementation of curricular and instructional materials should leverage evidence-based rubrics for evaluating how well potential materials align to stated goals for equity in STEM. Among other criteria, state-level actors should ensure that materials

• Are aligned to evidence-based instructional approaches in the STEM disciplines,
• Support instructional approaches that leverage culturally appropriate/sustaining pedagogy,
• Include a range of asset-based examples from different cultural contexts, and
• Integrate features that are educative for teachers.

Recommendation 12: State, district, and school leaders who are responsible for guiding the selection and adoption of instructional materials should

• Include criteria related to equity when selecting instructional materials in STEM.

• Use rubrics and measures of curriculum implementation to evaluate whether STEM learning opportunities are equitable across schools and grade levels within their districts.
• Draw on resources in the community in developing and adapting STEM curriculum and instructional materials.

Pathways

The committee emphasizes that in contrast to the oft-cited “STEM pipeline,” there is no single pathway to STEM learning and success, and success can be interpreted in a number of ways from person to person. Instead, pathways in STEM are fluid and dynamic; people take up different STEM learning experiences over time and space that together shape what they do with their STEM learning. For many children and youth, STEM pathways include learning experiences both within and outside of school.

There are a number of barriers to pathways—including course requirements, bias, and lack of out-of-school programs—built into current systems that often limit peoples’ STEM learning opportunities. Simultaneously, interpretations of pathways can be limiting for youth when approached as set tracks or pipelines that learners must follow based on their race, gender, socioeconomic class, language proficiency, or disability status.

Recommendation 13: In realizing a vision for equity in STEM, state-level actors (such as state superintendents, state department of education staff, legislators and governors) should review how state-level policies, including those related to resource allocations (e.g., school finances, distribution of highly qualified educators), need to change to build equitable STEM pathways. This could include attention to policies related to district and school funding formulae; assessment; course access, placement, and sequencing; graduation requirements; and instructional time. This review should attend to how these policies may contradict or work in concert with each other and toward addressing inequities or reproducing them. Specifically, state-level actors should

• Examine state-level expectations for minimum instructional time across grade levels so that all students have access to instruction in the STEM disciplines.
• Engage with multiple sources of evidence (such as student experience, etc.) in supporting the development of policies that inform course placement and pathways.
• Examine resource allocations in relation to need.

Recommendation 14: District and school administrators should consider ways to modify or eliminate course and program placement policies that limit students’ access to advanced coursework and programming. Where policy changes are made, administrators should develop communication strategies to explain the changes and devote resources to building the capacity of teachers, school staff (e.g., guidance counselors), and families to help them understand, support, and enact the policy changes.

Recommendation 15: District and school administrators should allocate sufficient time for elementary-level instruction in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, including science.

Recommendation 16: Guidance counselors, teachers, school administrators, and out-of-school educators/mentors should attend to a broad array of student strengths and capacities (rather than test scores and grades alone) when guiding and advising students toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics futures.

INVESTMENTS FOR ADVANCING EQUITY IN STEM

The committee recognizes that implementing the recommendations outlined will require investments of human capital, time, and resources. Organizations that fund programs in preK–12 STEM education can play an important role in prioritizing equity and providing the resources needed to engage in comprehensive systemic change.

Recommendation 17: To support equity STEM education, funders of preK–12 education such as philanthropic organizations, government agencies, and business and industry, should

• Provide resources for the development of STEM instructional materials and associated professional learning materials for teachers that include attention to equity and are designed with robust conceptions of equity at the center.
• Prioritize funding proposals for STEM education programs that identify a specific vision of equity, articulate a clear plan for how the project will achieve its equity goals, and center equity throughout the project design.
• Expand how projects can demonstrate success to include measures that go beyond narrow definitions of student achievement.
• Support investigation of systems-level change initiatives to promote equity, beyond a focus on programs that seek to impact individual learners.

The committee also outlined a set of priorities for research with attention to each of the four policy domains identified above. In this, they call for models of research that involve deep partnerships between researchers, schools, districts, and communities.