The Development of UTOP+: Culturally Relevant Classroom Observation Protocol for Math and Science Courses

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 4:20 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Transformative Pedagogical Stances in STEM Settings (Table 32)

Abstract

The UTOP is a widely used science and mathematics classroom observation tool but does not adequately account for culturally relevant education (CRE, Aronson et al., 2016). This study integrates CRE principles in the UTOP codebook to explicitly attend to the sociopolitical and ethical dimensions of teaching and learning. The new CRE indicators for the lesson implementation and content components of UTOP are presented along with illustrative examples and discipline-specific CRE extensions of canonical math and science teaching practices. This tool was developed to be informative and empowering to classroom educators serving historically marginalized student groups. We thus end with guidelines to support the use of the codebook in ways that correspond with core tenets of CRE.

Authors

• Corey Payne, Oak Ridge Associated Universities

• Brittany Jones, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Bailey Joan Bontrager, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Christine Lee Bae, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Jesse Senechal, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Lisa M. Abrams, Virginia Commonwealth University