Broadening Women's Participation in STEM: The Critical Role of Belonging

这项研究试图了解女性在STEM的参与率和成就率低于男性的原因。重点是STEM中归属感的作用，归属感被定义为作为学术学科的一员感到适合、个人接受、尊重和包容。这项研究建立在两个关键的先前观察的基础上：(1)归属感被很好地记录下来，有助于一系列积极的学术成果，如成就和动机，但(2)女性在STEM中的归属感低于男性。最近的研究，包括研究小组的初步工作，表明这种归属感上的性别差异是STEM代表性和成就的性别差异的基础，但关键问题仍然存在。首先，为什么女性在STEM中的归属感低于男性？这项研究通过调查理论上衍生的归属感前置因素以及它们如何在STEM中产生男性和女性之间的归属感差异来解决这一问题。其次，STEM中受挫的归属感如何转化为更低的表现和动力？这项拟议的研究专门测试了质疑一个人在某个领域的适合感是否会消耗原本用于学习和表现的认知资源，从而导致工作记忆容量的减少，这是低归属感对学习成绩产生负面影响的基础。这项将在科罗拉多大学进行的研究将特别关注女性？S在物理科学、技术工程和数学(PSTEM)领域的成就和保持，在这些领域，性别差距特别大和持续存在。这些研究问题将通过大型前瞻性实地研究和几项实验室研究来解决。这项实地研究既评估了归属感的前因，也评估了归属感对短期和长期学业成绩的影响。这将通过在本学期对参加Gateway PSTEM课程的男性和女性进行多次调查，然后跟踪他们在大学生涯中的学习表现来实现。在过去的研究中被确定为归属感可能的先行因素的因素(教师支持、一般社会支持、生活目标与PSTEM职业的兼容性、PSTEM中的性别刻板印象的突出程度)将在学期初进行测量，并将评估它们对学期末归属感的影响。我们还将评估归属感如何反过来影响课程结果(例如，课程成绩)，以及较长期的结果，如后续PSTEM班级的成绩和PSTEM专业的保留率。这项实地研究将得到对照实验室研究的补充，这些研究测试归属感对表现和学习的直接影响，以及归属感的下降是否由工作记忆容量的减少推动。这些研究将采取不同的情景线索的形式，这些线索应该影响女性的归属感，然后测量工作记忆容量，以及在测试已经学习的PSTEM材料或学习新的PSTEM内容时的表现。分析将评估女性成绩和学习能力的下降是否受到工作记忆容量下降的影响。尽管在大学攻读STEM学科的女性人数显著增加，但女性在PSTEM学科上的追求和成就仍然落后于男性。这项研究的主要目的是了解STEM内部的契合感和接受感在这种性别差异中所起的作用。其最终目标是提供以经验为基础的干预措施，在所有追求PSTEM的学生中培养一种安全的归属感。例如，对影响归属感的因素的了解，以及这些因素如何在实际的PSTEM班级中发挥作用以产生较低的归属感，可以用来塑造教育做法，以最大限度地减少这种性别差异。同样，了解对归属感的威胁如何损害成绩和学习，可以导致在真实的学习环境中将这些影响降至最低的策略。此外，虽然拟议工作的重点是了解归属感方面的性别差异以及这些差异如何在PSTEM的成绩和代表性方面造成性别差异，但更充分地理解归属感如何转化为积极的学术成果应有助于实现更广泛的目标，即增加其他代表性不足群体的参与，并促进所有学生在STEM取得成绩和留住学生。

This research seeks to understand the causes of women's lower rates of participation and achievement in STEM compared to men. The focus is specifically on the role of belonging in STEM defined as feeling a sense of fit, personal acceptance, respect, and inclusion as a member of an academic discipline. The study builds on two key prior observations: (1) belonging is well documented to facilitate a range of positive academic outcomes such as achievement and motivation, but (2) women report feeling a lower sense of belonging in STEM than do men. Recent research, including preliminary work by the research team, indicates that such gender differences in belonging underlie gender differences in STEM representation and achievement, but key questions remain. First, why do women experience a lower sense of belonging in STEM than men? The research addresses this by investigating theoretically-derived antecedents of belonging and how they may produce differences in belonging between men and women in STEM. Second, how does a thwarted sense of belonging in STEM translate into lower performance and motivation? The proposed research specifically tests whether questioning one's sense of fit in a domain consumes cognitive resources that would otherwise be used for learning and performance, producing reductions in working memory capacity that underlie the negative effects of low belonging on academic outcomes. The particular focus in this research, to be conducted at the University of Colorado, will be women?s achievement and retention within the physical sciences, technology engineering, and math (pSTEM), where gender disparities have been particularly large and persistent.These research questions will be addressed with a large prospective field study and several experimental lab studies. The field study assesses both the antecedents of belonging, and the impact of belonging on short-term and long-term academic outcomes. This will be accomplished by surveying men and women enrolled in gateway pSTEM classes several times during the semester, then tracking their academic performance throughout their college career. Factors identified in past research as possible antecedents of belonging (instructor support, general social support, compatibility of life goals with pSTEM careers, and salience of gender stereotypes in pSTEM) will be measured earlier in the semester, and their impact of end-of-semester belonging will be assessed. We will also assess how belonging in turn influences course outcomes (e.g., course grade), as well as longer-term outcomes such as grades in subsequent pSTEM classes and retention in a pSTEM major. The field study will be complemented by controlled lab studies that test the direct effect of belonging on performance and learning, and whether any decreases in belonging are driven by reduced working memory capacity. These studies will take the form of varying situational cues that should impact belonging among women, then measuring working memory capacity and either performance on tests of already learned pSTEM material or learning of new pSTEM content. Analyses will assess whether decrements in women's performance and learning are mediated by decreases in working memory capacity. Despite meaningful increases in the number of women pursing STEM disciplines in college, women's pursuit of and achievement within pSTEM disciplines still lags behind that of men. The main goal of this research is to understand the role that a sense of fit and acceptance within STEM plays in this gender gap. The ultimate goal is to inform empirically-rooted interventions that foster a secure sense of belonging among all students pursing pSTEM. For example, knowledge of factors that influence belonging, and how such factors may operate within actual pSTEM classes to produce lower belonging almng women, could be used to shape educational practices to minimize such gender differences. Similarly, knowledge of how threats to belonging impair performance and learning could lead to strategies that minimize these effects in authentic learning contexts. Moreover, while the proposed work is focused on understanding gender disparities in belonging and how these produce gender disparities in pSTEM achievement and representation, a fuller understanding of how belonging translates into positive academic outcomes should serve the broader goal of increasing participation among other underrepresented groups, as well as facilitating achievement and retention of all students in STEM.