Many STEM educators are navigating a period of change. Expectations around teaching, student support and institutional priorities are evolving, as they always do, and in some contexts, even the language used to describe this work is shifting.
What has not changed is the composition of our classrooms. Students continue to arrive with knowledge, networks and lived experiences that shape how they learn and succeed. These assets – often described as cultural wealth – include forms of capital such as community knowledge, multilingual skills, family support, persistence and the ability to navigate complex systems. Recognising and building on these strengths is not an optional add-on, it is a core component of effective teaching.
The challenge is how to do this work in ways that are practical, sustainable and appropriate to your context.
1. Reframe STEM learning
STEM education is often framed as the transmission of technical knowledge. For students, however, it is also a process of becoming, of working out who they are in relation to their field, their peers, their communities. How do we recognise this? I believe we can do so – and even encourage it – without a major curriculum redesign. Rather, we can make small, intentional shifts in how we frame learning and participation. This way, we position students’ existing knowledge as relevant, rather than peripheral, to their learning.
How this might look in practice:
- Use examples of scientists, engineers and alumni with varied backgrounds and career pathways to demonstrate that there are multiple ways to belong in STEM
- Design assignments that allow students to connect technical concepts to issues, communities or challenges that matter to them
- Invite students to reflect on how prior experiences – whether family, work or community-related – shape how they approach problem-solving.
For example, during a recent research study, I asked one of my engineering students who grew up in a rural community to bring in an example of systems engineering that they’ve seen in their daily lives. She brought in an example of a dairy farm system and noted that her rural background felt like an asset instead of a deficit because her “quirky” interests from her rural upbringing were honoured by the class.
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2. Connect learning to place and community
Institutions are shaped by the places, histories, industries and communities they exist within. By making this context visible, we can strengthen both engagement and relevance. Place-based approaches can be surprisingly powerful in helping students feel connected both to each other and to their institution. These approaches need not be complex. Small, intentional connections to local context can make learning more meaningful.
How this might look in practice:
- Incorporate case studies, datasets or examples drawn from local industries, environments or challenges
- Partner with community organisations, local government or industry to co-create applied student projects
- Encourage students to explore how their field can contribute to issues affecting their communities.
For example, you might ask students to bring in an engineering or computing problem affecting their home area or an area that they care about. You can then ask them how they might leverage concepts learned in the class to address them. Encourage students to emphasise the complexity of the problem and thoroughly look at it from multiple sides, including the human, structural, organisational, industrial and so on.
3. Learn from colleagues across institutional contexts
In many institutional contexts – particularly in community colleges, teaching-focused universities and other broad-access settings – educators have long developed approaches that centre students’ strengths and meet them where they are.
By creating opportunities to learn from this expertise, we can strengthen practice across the sector.
How this might look in practice:
- Develop partnerships across institutions to support student transitions into and through STEM programmes
- Share teaching strategies and advising approaches across institutions with different missions and student populations
- Value pedagogical expertise alongside research expertise when forming collaborations.
These connections can reveal practical, tested approaches that are immediately applicable across contexts.
4. Connect in person whenever possible
The pandemic taught us all to meet remotely for efficient and convenient collaboration and learning. That said, while virtual learning and connection is certainly viable, meeting in person brings about the big leaps and gains in learning. Students share more freely and feel more connected to each other and to the real-time learning that happens.
We don’t need new terminology or large-scale initiatives to embed students’ cultural wealth into STEM teaching. We need to recognise what students already bring and make deliberate choices to build on those assets.
By extension, I issue this as a call to action for funding agencies and policymakers to incentivise in-person work.
Change is constant, so we know that contexts will continue to shift, language will evolve, and priorities will be redefined. But students will still arrive with their knowledge, experience and ambition. The question is whether our teaching is flexible enough to recognise and respond to it.
Sarah L. Rodriguez is an associate professor of engineering education in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering.
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