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.).