The Ecological-Belonging Intervention—an exercise designed to minimize differences between first-year students taking introductory science courses and normalize the challenges that come with the transition to college—is proving that a mere recognition of the problems that students face can help to dismantle racial and gender achievement gaps. So much so that the exercise is now mandatory for every student that takes an introductory biology or physics course.
The intervention, which began as an experiment in a 2015 biology lecture, is now being adopted in universities across the nation and yielding similar results. The paper, “Changing Social Contexts to Foster Equity in College Science Courses: An Ecological-Belonging Intervention,” outlines findings related to the experiment and was published in the Association for Psychological Science last year.
[Chandralekha Singh in a gray shirt]
Chandralekha Singh
“You can clearly tell there’s a difference in culture after an intervention,” said Chandralekha Singh, a professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Physics and Astronomy and director of the Discipline-Based Science Education Research Center (dB-SERC). “Students from racially ethnic minority groups and women are more likely to feel engaged in group conversation and problem solving, and those students now feel like it’s a safe environment. They’re willing to actively participate without feeling judged.”