Humanizing Stem Education, Valuing Cultures Of Care Through Conscious Values Based Leadership

Humanizing STEM education advances the concern for humanity and welfare of students in STEM education. Cultures of care can be considered as strong endeavors to humanize STEM education. Cultivating STEM cultures of care requires conscious values-based leadership. To explore conscious values-based STEM leaders’ perceptions on STEM cultures of care, a culture values framework was designed. The framework identified thematic assumption domains and descriptive values for the STEM culture of care. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted on 18 transcripts of STEM faculty leaders at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The transcripts were provided by the Center for the Advancement of STEM Leadership (CASL). Within the HBCU context, a STEM culture of care was modeled based on the findings of study. Our findings also highlighted the significance of consciousness in STEM faculty leaders.