Inclusive STEM teaching learning community facilitator survey data

Inclusive teaching requires more than good intentions; it is an ongoing
commitment to learning, reflecting, and making equitable and inclusive
changes to pedagogical practices and curriculum to support all students.
This paper examines a professional development program designed to advance
the awareness, self-efficacy, and ability of STEM educators to cultivate
inclusive learning environments for all their students and to develop
themselves as reflective, inclusive practitioners. Specifically, we
examine how this training model impacted learning community facilitator
self-reported confidence and practices in facilitating an inclusive
teaching learning community.  This mixed methods study reports on
survey data from project trained facilitators (n=71) collected over four
course runs. Quantitative results indicate that facilitators reported
significant increases in confidence, with the largest effect sizes
occurring in areas of facilitation related to diversity, equity, and
inclusion (DEI) and identity. Additionally, significant increases were
reported across all levels of prior DEI experience. Qualitative findings
indicate that the program training model effectively aligned facilitators
to project-defined inclusive facilitation approaches. Facilitators also
reported significant utilization of the Facilitator Workbook to support
learning community (LC) facilitation, benefitted from our co-facilitation
structure, and increased their inclusive facilitation skills through the
act of LC facilitation. This inclusive teaching program has demonstrated
that professional development in inclusive teaching, and by extension in
other equity and diversity topics, can be successfully done at a national
scale by centering identity, power, and positionality while upholding ‘do
no harm.’ Further, the program has shown that dissemination through
project-trained facilitators of local LCs can be successful across a wide
range of institutional and disciplinary contexts. This paper provides a
strategy for how DEI-focused faculty development efforts can select,
train, and support facilitators on a national scale while maintaining high
fidelity to project goals.