students learn, in which all students have equal opportunity to succeed. Attention to the social dynamics and culture of the learning environment is a crucial component of understanding the systems and structures needed to support learning and the teaching in the classroom.

The Committee has analyzed evidence and examples throughout this report and presented conclusions as they arose in each chapter. This chapter does not recount the evidence presented throughout the document but does provide an overview of the implications we drew from that evidence. As can be seen from the conclusions shared in the earlier chapters, there is strong evidence to show that teaching practices can be improved to be more equitable and effective. The evidence is not as robust that changes to policies and priorities can support those necessary changes to teaching practices. However, together these changes have a high likelihood to help achieve a system in which all undergraduate STEM students experience equitable and effective learning experiences, feel belonging, and have the opportunity to succeed in their STEM courses and programs regardless of their identity or background.

The committee therefore authored recommendations for action that span the range of levels and actors in higher education. Making student-centered learning a central and explicit goal of course design is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of achieving equitable and effective learning experiences. The challenge of defining equitable and effective teaching is also partly a journey in helping the higher education community redefine what teaching means, and in so doing identifying the equity-based behaviors currently missing from our current notion of effective teaching. This redefinition requires individuals to reflect upon their own practices as well as work toward changes to the overall system. The recommendations therefore call for communication, questions, reflection, and discussion, not simply action. The committee recognizes that current political, social, and financial conditions make taking action on these recommendations challenging for actors in higher education and that achieving these ends should be a long-term goal, not one that contributes to burnout of instructors and administrators.

These recommendations apply across the wide range of types of institutions in which undergraduate STEM education occurs. Despite the varying sizes, priorities, and budgets, all institutions do share a responsibility for providing high-quality STEM learning experiences for all students. They are individually and collectively responsible for questioning longstanding policies and practices in undergraduate STEM education that have produced, perpetuated, and exacerbated differences in opportunities, experiences, and outcomes among post-secondary STEM students. This questioning, reflection, and evidence-based action is needed to ensure that all students—including those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, students of color,

rural students, first-generation college goers, women, LGBTQIA+ students, veterans, parents and other caregivers, and students with disabilities—have equitable opportunities to learn about and engage in STEM.

TOWARD EQUITABLE AND EFFECTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES

STEM learning is shaped by the characteristics and experiences of learners, myriad social interactions, the broader cultural context, and policies at all levels. The identities and backgrounds of students and instructors alike influence these processes and outcomes. This is evident in the research, which finds that students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, students of color, first-generation college attendees, women, and students with disabilities are among the groups who have consistently fared worse in postsecondary STEM education.

Widespread use of teaching strategies that are not supported by research have contributed to the disparities in opportunity and outcomes for undergraduate STEM students. Recent changes in the demographics of the student population and pressures on higher education to meet the demands of the 21st century STEM workplace underscore the need to re-evaluate instructional practices in STEM and improve the learning experiences of undergraduate students in STEM courses. Instructional practices that take students’ interests and experiences into account and provide them with authentic opportunities to engage with disciplinary content, practices, and analysis have been shown to be more effective than instructional practices that rely solely on lecture, reading, and memorization of content, procedures, and algorithms. In particular, students’ experiences in foundational courses are especially important for their persistence in STEM, because often, these courses filter out students rather than deepen their engagement, interest, and understanding of STEM topics. Improving instruction in these courses specifically is an important lever for producing more equitable opportunities and outcomes for undergraduate STEM students.

Students in STEM take many paths through higher education, including transitions within and across institutions and use of different modalities (e.g., online courses, on-campus instruction, internships, and apprenticeships). There are barriers to students’ success that arise from the current quality of instruction and the structure of course offerings and requirements. Students are usually expected to take a sequence of STEM courses that are often not well coordinated, and the overall goals for what students learn in individual courses and across course sequences are often not well articulated. While the availability of diverse pathways provides choices and options for students, it also increases the complexity of their learning experiences. This diversity in learning experiences makes it even more important

to employ equitable and effective instructional practices that are responsive to students’ interests and previous experiences.

Equitable and effective approaches make student learning and a student-centered approach the primary driver. This is in contrast to an instructor-centered course that schedules, policies, and assessments are intended to allow the instructor to cover a certain volume of content. Courses rooted in equitable and effective teaching (a) are designed around clear learning goals, (b) recognize the students’ role in their own learning, and (c) cultivate environments that give students agency to engage in the course material in ways that welcome and respect their identities

The seven Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching developed for this report by the Committee are derived from the evidence on learning and teaching. As discussed in detail in Chapter 4, these Principles are intended to inform the design and enactment of more equitable and effective pedagogical approaches. Using these Principles to improve undergraduate teaching and learning in STEM will require a commitment from leaders of STEM academic units and higher education institutions as well as from individual instructors. The Principles are as follows:

• Principle 1: Students need opportunities to actively engage in disciplinary learning
• Principle 2: Students’ diverse interests, goals, knowledge, and experiences can be leveraged to enhance learning
• Principle 3: STEM learning involves affective and social dimensions
• Principle 4: Identity and sense of belonging shape STEM teaching and learning
• Principle 5: Multiple forms of data can provide evidence to inform improvement
• Principle 6: Flexibility and responsiveness to situational and contextual factors support student learning
• Principle 7: Intentionality and transparency create more equitable opportunities

Realizing equitable and effective teaching through the adoption of these Principles is a multi-level endeavor that involves individuals, academic units, and institutions. Individual or groups of instructors undertake continuous improvement through repeated cycles of innovation, implementation, and reflection/learning. Decisions and policies related to teaching can impede or promote the implementation of the seven Principles. Academic units hold collective responsibility for ensuring that instructors working under their auspices have the resources and supports they need to provide equitable and effective undergraduate STEM learning experiences, and that all learning experiences overseen by the academic unit, including courses, assessments,

laboratories, field experiences, research experiences, and prerequisite and other requirements for programs and majors, provide equitable and effective STEM learning experiences for all students. Academic units (e.g., departments or programs) play a major role in decisions and policies about teaching assignments, career advancement, rewards, promotion, and tenure; these decisions explicitly or tacitly establish how teaching is valued, recognized, evaluated, and rewarded. In some academic units those teaching courses that are foundational or have large enrollments or that are designed for non-major learners are not treated with the same respect as those who teach upper-level courses focused on students majoring in the discipline. Academic unit decisions and policies related to teaching can impede or promote the implementation of equitable and effective teaching strategies. Institutional leadership can articulate and prioritize goals that align with the seven Principles and provide the financial and human resources that are needed for significant change at the system level.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING INSTRUCTION AND COURSES

Achieving equitable and effective teaching and learning requires improving instruction and courses, and specific recommendations are provided here for steps toward those improvements. However, these changes will be difficult to achieve and will not have optimal impact if the subsequent recommendations on how to alter the existing systemic incentives are not also addressed.

Recommendation 1: Instructors, working independently and collaboratively, should use the Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching to reflect on and revise their instructional practices, approaches to assessment, course syllabi and grading policies, and the selection and use of instructional resources. They should articulate clear learning goals for courses and use these learning goals to design instruction and assessment for courses in all modalities and settings, including online, in the classroom, in the laboratory, and in the field and continually reflect on and improve instructional practices over time based on student learning data.

Recommendation 2: Members of academic units collectively should take responsibility for reviewing the portfolio of courses offered and the sequencing of courses using the Principles for equitable and effective teaching. They should work collectively to define clear course and program learning outcomes and use them to refine and revise the content and pedagogy of course sequences and individual courses. As part of the

review, academic units should use both aggregated and disaggregated data of multiple forms to identify courses or course sequences that appear to be producing systematic, inequitable outcomes and undertake revisions to address them.

Recommendation 3: Developers of instructional materials and resources at institutions of higher education, non-profits, and companies should work collaboratively with experts in teaching and learning (and experienced instructors) to develop resources and materials, including educational and instructional technology, using the Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching. as a guide for informing design from the initial stages of conceptualization. If developers attempt to use the Principles to modify a product in a later stage of development it is less likely that the resulting product will be equitable and effective. Developers should also work collaboratively with experts in teaching and learning (and experienced instructors) to create the professional learning, support, and guidance that instructors will need to equitably and effectively use their products.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR VALUING AND SUPPORTING INSTRUCTORS

Changes to courses and instruction as recommended in the previous section require that academic units and institutions value teaching itself and the efforts instructors make to learn about and provide equitable learning experiences for students. The recommendations below convey multiple ways that academic units and institutions can engage in the continuous improvement process that is central to achieving equitable and effective teaching. Recommendations 4–7 focus on how academic units and institutions can demonstrate that they value teaching and instructors and Recommendations 8–10 on how they can support professional learning about teaching.

Continuous improvement requires support for all instructors to engage in professional learning and development (PLD) throughout their careers. The specific nature of the professional learning will likely vary over time as instructors develop expertise, but the goal of equitable and effective teaching necessitates an ongoing process of learning and reflection. This process of learning and reflection is important for everyone who engages with undergraduates in their courses and classrooms: full-time tenure-track faculty, teaching-track faculty, VITAL educators (visiting faculty, instructors, teaching assistants, adjunct faculty, lecturers), graduate student teaching assistants, postdoctoral fellows, undergraduate learning assistants, and others.

this multi-level coordination includes connections to student affairs, student success, disability resources centers, academic advisors, tutoring centers, and other professionals. Many of the specifics for how institutional leaders engage with these resources on their campuses are outside the scope of this study, yet essential to the success of change efforts toward equitable and effective STEM education and should be kept in mind as leaders work to follow our recommendations.

Institutional leaders can analyze and reform policies and practices so that incentives for faculty, instructors, and academic unit leaders are aligned with the goal of equitable and effective teaching and all stakeholders are supported in change efforts. Policies and procedures at the institutional level can either impede or promote implementation of the principles for equitable and effective teaching. Data, both aggregated and disaggregated, are a key tool to understand, enact, and monitor change. Both quantitative and qualitative data are needed to fully understand what is happening in a system and to provide information to guide change efforts. Institutional change at the deepest levels is an ongoing process. Reflective analysis of data best guides policy and practice decisions and informs ongoing efforts to improve.

Administrators can also analyze and reform policies and practices so that the institutional reward system for faculty, instructors, and academic unit leaders is aligned with the goal of equitable and effective teaching and all stakeholders are supported in change efforts. For example, grades and the approaches to assigning them do not fully convey the complexity and extent of student learning; policies that support student learning and that promote more equitable and effective grading approaches might be explored.

Institutional change toward equitable and effective education is an ongoing process of continuous improvement that can include (a) opportunities for institutional stakeholders at all levels to become familiar with the Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching and why they are important; (b) attention to an academic unit’s culture and the challenges of implementing change; (c) both top-down and bottom-up changes with attention to power dynamics in the institution and who holds positional power as well as who holds more informal power and influence; and (d) vigilant and transparent communication among key stakeholders.

Setting up processes for continuous improvement can have a larger long-term impact than seeking quick, dramatic change. Many actors outside institutions of higher education can contribute to the continuous improvement process through providing financial or informational resources as well as prioritizing and publicizing approaches aligned to the Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching.

• Offer events that showcase and disseminate practices, tools, data, and research related to implementing equitable and effective teaching.
• Cultivate professional learning and development communities for current and future instructors and encourage academic units to do the same.
• Include experts in equitable and effective teaching in society leadership.
• Review the guidelines for any accreditations that they administer and support academic units to implement these guidelines in ways that maximize equitable and effective teaching and learning.
• Promote comparative studies that help identify approaches that lead to more equitable outcomes, especially for foundational courses.

Recommendation 14: Oversight bodies should endorse and adopt the Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching to guide their work. Through their oversight, they should require institutional leaders to demonstrate that work at their institution is being done in alignment with the Principles and that policies and procedures have been updated accordingly.

Recommendation 15: Funders should endorse and adopt the use of the Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching to prioritize evidence-based projects that support both implementation of and research about equitable and effective teaching. Implementation funding should include support for ongoing professional learning and development activities at different types of institutions of higher education, especially those that have fewer resources. Research funding should include some long-term projects that study student experiences and outcomes over time. Implementation projects should include evaluation plans.

GUIDANCE FOR IMPLEMENTATION

The above recommendations provide specific guidance for key actors in the system of undergraduate STEM education. Because changes are needed by multiple actors and at multiple levels across the system the list of recommended actions is long.

While many have already begun work to improve teaching and learning, we provide here some starting points for a few selected key actors who are beginning or ramping up this work: institutional leaders, academic units, and instructors.

For many, starting with applying Principle 1: Active engagement to their course(s) will help them identify a place to begin (e.g., changes to assessments as discussed in Chapter 5) with Recommendation 2 (use of data to identify inequitable outcomes in courses or course sequences) providing the information needed to determine whether the change(s) desired are happening and if the impacts are improving experiences and outcomes.

As discussed above, instructors need academic unit and institutional leaders to support them in this work by providing the reward structures (Recommendation 10) and professional development opportunities (Recommendations 4 and 5) needed. Taken together, the Principles and the report’s recommendation will help instructors develop the continuous improvement mindset needed to support all students who take STEM courses and pursue STEM degrees.

RESEARCH AGENDA

While the Committee found extensive evidence to support their conclusions and inform their recommendations, they also found areas where their questions could not be answered due to lack of data or a need for future research. Informed by their analysis of the existing context and current research, the following areas of future research are proposed. This section lays out some categories of research that would help inform continued improvement in efforts to achieve equitable and effective learning experiences. For each category, a few themes are proposed to guide future studies of equitable and effective teaching and learning. A few specific examples are included for each theme to illustrate some of the types of research questions that fall under that theme. Across these categories, this research should be done in ways that illuminate and provide information about student learning in a wide range of modalities and across institution types.

Toward Equitable and Effective Learning Experiences

As the classroom becomes more diverse with students from a full range of identity groups, conducting more research and disaggregating data will help instructors better understand how to serve student needs. Discipline-based education research can provide information on specific courses of study. Meta-analyses, landscape analyses, causal research, and longitudinal studies would allow for greater understanding.

Student Pathways

To better understand undergraduate student experiences researchers can examine pathways for various categories of students, such as those

who do not major in STEM fields, those who commute to school or learn primarily online, those who transfer institutions during their studies, as well as differences by gender, race, first-generation status, or other demographic categories. Potential research questions in this theme include

• What data are most effective in helping institutions track and modify the barriers and opportunities transfer students encounter at receiving institutions? To what extent do outcomes (e.g., rate of completion, total time to graduation, total cost of degree, retention in a STEM major or in STEM overall) differ for students who complete their bachelor’s degree at one institution versus at multiple institutions?
• To what extent do students use the practices and concepts they learn as undergraduates in their future jobs? How frequently do students entering career and technical education (CTE) programs finish and obtain employment in their intended field? How does this differ across different types of CTE programs and how does it compare to the job and career pathways of non-CTE students?

Learning and Grading

Higher education has traditionally attempted to use grades to measure learning, but alternative grading approaches may better measure what students learn and their preparation to enter the workforce than traditional methods of assigning grades. Further research could help determine to what extent grades correlate with increased student understanding due to their experiences in courses or reflect differences in knowledge or privilege that students possess when they enter courses. Potential research questions in this theme include

• What methods for more holistic approaches to evaluating the capabilities of STEM students work best to demonstrate learning?
• What methods of measuring student engagement with their program content, relevant research experiences, and skills gained might inform decisions about how to make learning more student centered? To what extent do programmatic scale interventions alter student learning, sense of belonging, and sense of identity?
• What aspects of interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary courses contribute to increases in student engagement, persistence, learning, or future employment prospects?

• What rewards and incentives, given to faculty either individually or as a group/cohort, contribute to their use of instructional practices that create equitable and effective learning environments for all students?
• In which way can instruments for students’ evaluation of teaching be co-created by faculty, administrators, and students? In turn, how could the data from student evaluations be combined with data from other sources to reimagine teaching evaluations that promote the Principles for Equitable and Effective Teaching?

Professional Learning and Development

Research on PLD could help to identify features that would best support instructors of various roles and appointment types (e.g., VITAL instructors, CTE instructors) and whether there are differences in PLD approaches that work better for different populations or those who teach in different course types, levels, or modalities.

• What are the impacts of pedagogical self-efficacy and pedagogical content knowledge on current and future faculty? How does instructor mindset about the usefulness of PLD influence their PLD engagement or behavior changes post PLD?
• How do CTE faculty seek out assistance with strengthening their teaching practice, and how do CTE faculty perceive themselves and their field in relation to the other STEM fields?
• What are the best rewards and recognitions to incentivize PLD?
• How do teaching awards given to individual faculty impact their career progression and/or the instructional practices used by their colleagues?
• What rewards and incentives, given to faculty either individually or as a group/cohort, contribute to their use of instructional practices that create equitable and effective learning environments for all students?

Advancing and Measuring Systemic Change

Achieving equitable and effective learning experiences for students requires setting goals and measuring progress toward those goals. The data needed to measure progress differ by institution type and for non-institutional actors such as funders, accreditors, and disciplinary societies. Additional studies that address questions like those listed below could provide information on approaches to data collection and sharing as well as deeper understanding of the overall system of higher education and the experiences of STEM students and instructors.

• How could AI assist instructors, academic units, and institutions in understanding student pathways though STEM programs?
• What role can AI tools play in supporting equitable and effective practices by instructors? What role can it play in course design and development? Can it assist with course and program learning outcome alignment?
• What role can AI tools serve in enhancing tutoring, navigating course content, and program pathways?

A FINAL WORD

STEM education is a wonderful opportunity for people to learn about the world around them—to become knowledgeable about natural processes, technological innovations, and the built environment in ways that enhance our quality of life. Looking ahead to the future needs of society, including economic growth and innovation, it is critical to improve understanding of how people learn, to continuously move toward more equitable and effective pedagogies, and to envision and enact ways to achieve changes in the system of higher education to facilitate design of educational experiences that provide more learners access to an equitable and effective undergraduate STEM education. Society will not fully benefit from the development and use of future discoveries and innovations if access continues to be restricted and not all people have opportunities to experience equitable and effective STEM education. These changes are necessary to provide the information, tools, and resources needed to address future challenges facing our society and our planet.

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