CAREER: Designing Linguistically Responsive Environments for STEM Learning

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The number of students from non-dominant linguistic backgrounds (NDLBs) is increasing in U.S. higher education. Most students from NDLBs in the United States have grown up in Spanish-speaking households, yet there are increasing numbers of students who speak other languages such as Arabic, Somali, Swahili, and Nepali.

While students from NDLBs bring useful resources for academic success, they also experience challenges when learning STEM content within English-dominant learning environments. Research in K-12 science education has shown that students from NDLBs learn and participate better when their learning environments offer opportunities to move flexibly between two or more languages.

Through such practices, the students can build on linguistic and knowledge resources developed in their primary languages, and their multilingual identities can be validated. Despite evidence that supports this flexible language use for STEM and English learning, it has been rarely studied at the college level as a way to enhance college students’ STEM learning.

This project seeks to fill this gap by, first, examining how college students from NDLBs use multiple languages in the context of STEM learning, and, second, by designing a STEM learning environment that encourages and supports flexible use of languages for students from NDLBs. This project will advance understanding about the interrelationship between STEM learning and language use and to investigate pedagogical environments and practices that better facilitate STEM learning.

Given that students from NDLBs are a growing population in the U.S. education system, findings can have broad impacts on students and educators in post-secondary STEM education.

The practice of moving dynamically between, and combining elements of, two or more languages to make sense of multilingual contexts is known as translanguaging. The project team will conduct three studies: Study 1 seeks to identify the translanguaging practices of college students from NDLBs through task-based paired interviews that engage two speakers of a common language; Study 2 aims to use semi-structured interviews to examine linguistic experiences in STEM learning environment of college students from NDLBs; and Study 3 intends to design and test a learning environment that supports the learning of students from NDLBs by encouraging translanguaging practices appropriate for college STEM learning and participation.

The project team will administer Studies 1 and 2 in two different institutional contexts, an urban R1 university (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Spanish-bilingual community college (Saint Augustine College). Similarities and differences between the two institutions will provide critical insights into the conditions under which students from NDLBs may develop various translanguaging strategies and fully leverage their linguistic resources.

Study 3 will be implemented in a freshman general chemistry course at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Taking the approach of design-based research, the project team will design the learning environment by building on the findings of Studies 1-2 and relevant literature, analyze the data collected through the intervention (videorecordings, interviews, and surveys) to revise the learning environment design for the second iteration, and generate robust evidence-based theories about the creating linguistically responsive learning environment in college STEM education.

This CAREER award is supported by NSF's IUSE: EHR Program which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.