1.3.4 Inclusive Teaching through Management of Attitudes
and Expectations
The growth mindset framework, namely the belief that intelligence can be
developed and improved and that is it not fixed (mindset theory), has
been linked to multiple outcomes, but most work has focused on
educational gains and performance. Pedagogical literature suggests
instructors should encourage a growth mindset in students (Dweck, 2015).
A recent meta-analysis examined if growth mindset was associated with
increased academic performance and if growth mindset interventions
improved performance (Sisk et al, 2018). The authors found weak but
significant associations: students with growth mindsets have higher
academic achievement and interventions to increase growth mindset can be
successful (Sisk et al, 2018). Interventions were beneficial for
students from low socioeconomic status households and for at-risk
students, but not for students from middle- and high-income households
(Sisk et al, 2018). Mode of intervention mattered. Successful
intervention involved out-of-class readings on growth mindset followed
by writing a reflection; however, results on intervention success should
be interpreted with caution as many suffered from methodological issues
(Sisk et al, 2018). Another study found student commitment to active
learning was influenced by growth mindset and trust in the instructor,
but only the latter was related to performance in the course (Cavanagh
et al, 2018). These results highlight the importance of the
student-instructor interaction and are particularly relevant for taking
active learning online. Instructors can increase student trust by being
transparent in purpose and goals (see Section 1.3.1), showing students
evidence-based benefits of active learning, being consistent and clear
in alignment between activities and assessments, and encouraging growth
mindset (Cavanagh et al, 2018).
Instructors can also help students maximize the benefits of active
learning by pushing students to think metacognitively about their
studying and learning (McGuire and McGuire, 2015) as metacognitive
thinking benefits performance. For example, students randomly assigned
to complete a self-guided online questionnaire asking them to strategize
about upcoming exams performed better than students assigned to the
control (no prompt to strategize) condition (Chen et al, 2017). In
addition to the focus on metacognition, instructors can help their
students practice emotional regulation and enhance personal connection
to the material. These practices are especially relevant for minoritized
or underserved students. Students with low success expectations, low
subject interest, or low self-efficacy tend to not perform as well in
academic courses and are more likely to drop out or change majors. But,
simple interventions can help increase interest and expectations. For
example, Hulleman and Harackiewicz (2009) conducted a randomized trial
and found that by simply asking students to write about the usefulness
and utility of the science material to their own life, vs writing a
summary of the science material (control group), increased self-reported
course interest and course performance (grade), and this effect was only
present for students with initial low success expectations. Hood and
colleagues (2020) found that the use of active learning in a community
college anatomy & physiology course decreased self-reported
self-efficacy but only among non-white, first-generation students. This
outcome may have been driven by anxiety, as first-generation students
rated multiple active learning techniques as more anxiety-provoking than
did continuing-generation students (Hood et al., 2020). Luckily, a quick
intervention may be able to prevent this outcome. In a recent study,
Rozek and colleagues show that a simple writing intervention aimed at
reappraising and dealing with pre-exam stress improved exam scores and
passing rates specifically for low-income students in a high school
biology course (Rozek et al, 2019). When moving to online teaching,
implementing self-paced interventions which ask students to consider the
types of questions they think they will see, the resources they will use
to prepare, and how they will use those resources (Zhao et al, 2014;
Chen et al, 2017), as well as asking them how material relates to their
own lives (Hulleman and Harackiewicz, 2009), and helping students manage
course-related emotions (Rozek et al, 2019) could increase academic
performance. These are simple course design elements that instructors
could incorporate into their online classes.
Instructor mindset, not just that of students, is important for student
success. For example, a large study (> 15,000 students, 150
faculty) found that students enrolled in STEM courses taught by
instructors with a fixed mindset earned lower grades than those taught
by instructors with a growth mindset (Canning et al, 2019). This effect
was especially pronounced for Black, Latinx, and Native American
students compared to white or Asian students (Canning et al, 2019), thus
supporting the ideas of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is a
psychological phenomenon which occurs when negative stereotypes about a
minoritized individual’s group are made salient and this realization
increases doubt and anxiety and decreases performance (Steele and
Aronson, 1995; Steele, 1997). Experimental research has shown that
inducing stereotype threat widens achievement gaps (Steele and Aronson,
1995; Steele, 1997). Instructors can communicate their fixed mindset or
other implicit biases about a group in many verbal and non-verbal ways,
thus providing students with unintentional micromessages about who
“belongs” in STEM and who does not (Morrell and Parker, 2013).
Minoritized students are disproportionately impacted by instructor
mindset at the undergraduate level (Canning et al, 2019) and field-level
belief in raw or innate ability is associated with underrepresentation
of women and Black academics at the faculty level across STEM fields,
including evolutionary biology (Leslie et al, 2015). Thus, the way in
which instructors think about student learning abilities and the way in
which they communicate with students matters.
These behaviors and thoughts also drive the pygmalion effect (i.e.,
teacher expectations predict student performance) and likely have
far-reaching effects as engagement and grades in core STEM courses serve
as a gateway for who can succeed and persist in STEM. For example,
students from underrepresented groups (African American, Latinx, Native
American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander), those who have
low-income status, are women, or first-generation college students are
less likely to persist in STEM (chemistry) than are their comparable
peers (white, Asian, International; high-income; men;
continuing-generation) if they earn a C- or below, but more
likely to persist if they earn a C or higher (Harris et al, 2020).
Thus, having an instructor that believes all students can succeed and
encourages all students to maximize their potential could be critical
for reducing the well-documented achievement and persistence gaps in
STEM. Actions individual instructors can take to increase inclusion
include: 1.) attending to gaps in privilege and belonging;2.) acknowledging and reducing implicit bias; and 3.)actively mitigating stereotype threat (Killpack and Melon, 2016). For
more details on how to achieve and actively do these steps, please see
Killpack and Melon (2016). Conveying support and encouragement in an
online course can be challenging as there is little to no personal
interaction between student and instructor. Thus, as with
trauma-informed pedagogy, it is important to have some form of
personalized communication built into the online course.
One activity that can increase engagement and foster a sense of
community online is use of discussion boards. Students can create
content and can comment on content created by others. The discussion
board is also a great place to foster instructor-student interaction.
The following questions are not specific to ecology and evolution
content and could be used in a variety of courses. These types of
questions can increase sense of safety, connectedness, and can encourage
metacognitive thinking and can be used in combination with many other
strategies provided in this paper. Possible discussion board prompts:1.) Please list one strategy or tool you are using to help
yourself transition to this new format of learning; 2.) Please
look over the course syllabus. Then, email me something you are hoping
to learn in this course and a fact or misconception that you know about
one of the topics listed on our syllabus schedule; 3.) Please
list one thing that you’ve done for your physical or mental health this
week. It can be something small or something big; 4.) The current
situation is stressful and challenging for all of us in a variety of
ways. There are lots of things we cannot control. One thing we can
control is our behavior and we can spread kindness. Please list one kind
thing that you have done for someone else in the last week. This can be
a small or a big thing. It can be for a friend, a family member, a
neighbor, a stranger, a group, and organization, etc.; 5.) Please
look through the learning goals pertaining to this week’s material.
Then, create one original (do not copy it from somewhere else - use your
critical thinking) multiple choice question that could appear on the
exam for that unit. This will give you all a chance to practice
metacognitive thinking about the course and will give me some possible
questions for the exam; 6.) Use some form of creative expression
to illustrate a concept from class. Creative expression is broadly
defined and can be art work (any medium; submit a pic or video of item),
photography, a meme, a poem, an infographic, a short skit/performance
(film it), or really anything else that you want that is creative.
Please keep these tasteful (e.g., nothing offensive, derogatory, etc.)
and please create an original submission; 7.) Please look back
through all the material we covered this semester, remember to look over
lecture notes, the readings, the class activities, and the supplemental
material. Then, describe the most interesting thing you learned;8.) In your opinion, what did you learn in this course that you
feel really matters for you/for life? This can be subject/material
based, learning-in-general based, or “life-lesson” based. The term
“really matters” can be defined as narrowly or as broadly as you’d
like. For your answer, please list what you learned and describe why you
feel it really matters (e.g. why you chose it/how it will benefit you
later, etc.).