STEM Identity Development: Leveraging Teacher STEM Identity to Design Activities for Students

Developing students’ STEM identities and career awareness within a science discipline can be challenging for teachers as STEM identity extends beyond specific content expertise and traditional pedagogical skills. This study investigated how teachers’ STEM identities along with their shared understanding of the goals for including STEM identity activities in a geoscience curriculum unit contributed to the design of classroom activities intended to develop their students’ STEM identities. Data for this study includes video recordings from a teacher professional development workshop in which six middle school teachers from a large district in central California explored their own STEM identities, survey data on students’ STEM identities, and artifacts from co-designed activities tailored to teachers’ classes. Results reveal that teachers’ STEM identities significantly influence how they support the development of students’ STEM identities. In addition, providing teachers with the opportunity to describe their own STEM identity led to meaningful focus for the co-design process. Finally, while the focus of this workshop was a geoscience unit, this study argues that the co-design process as applied to STEM identity activities can apply to other STEM topics.