Blog

Why are some teachers able to expand students’ access to STEM while others are not? Students from marginalized communities are systematically denied STEM learning opportunities, but some teachers manage to disrupt unjust policies and create more equitable learning environments. Schools are difficult places to make change (Little, 2003), so we wanted to better understand how […]

Since the advent of national and state teaching standards (e.g., Council of Chief State School Officers, 2013; Georgia Professional Standards Commission, n.d.), teacher educators have been contemplating how to support teachers from their preservice program through their first years of teaching (Darling-Hammond, 2017). Well-developed programs that contribute to the successful transition of a newly hired […]

Listen to Dr. Kirkland’s presentation at the Noyce Summit. It would be an understatement to say that we are living through life-changing and challenging times. We are facing multiple pandemics: the health crisis precipitated by COVID; the social crisis reignited by the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd; and the economic crisis […]

More than half of all children in public schools are students of color, but only about a fifth of educators are teachers of color (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). This mismatch is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, there is considerable evidence that teachers of color provide academic as well as social […]

Can programs focused on helping pre-service educators build a teacher-researcher dual identity change the notion that STEM ability is something that one is either born with or without? There is a growing number of teacher-researcher programs that provide authentic laboratory experiences to aspiring and practicing teachers. Such programs span the gamut of Undergraduate Research Experiences […]