Profiles of Science Engagement: Broadening Participation by Understanding Individual and Contextual Influences

ECR(教育和人力资源核心研究)计划强调STEM教育的基础研究，这将产生该领域的基础知识。这项研究将调查学生对科学的参与度，以期扩大对STEM领域的参与。这将是一项重要的任务，因为研究表明，学生参与度低是来自STEM领域往往代表性不足的学生的主要挑战。这项研究将有助于促进STEM领域的知识，这些领域关于学生参与的经验研究落后于这一领域的理论工作。很少有研究将学生参与度作为一个多方面的结构来衡量，以扩大对科学的参与。这项研究将通过确定培养最佳学生参与度的教学环境，并检查青少年学生在科学方面的参与度是否因性别、年级、种族/民族以及这些因素的交集而系统地变化，从而促进STEM教育中的知识。它将通过调查科学学习背景、成就和持之以恒相关成果的特点以及这些关系是否因性别、年级、种族/族裔以及这些因素的交集而不同而符合国家利益。这项研究还将审查科学教育工作者如何对已确定的概况和观察到的变化做出反应，并将利用这些知识设计材料，向实践者传播研究结果。本项目将使用以人为本的分析方法来考察学生在不同科学学习环境中参与的个体差异和背景差异，并将参与模式与学生在STEM领域的成就和坚持性联系起来。丰富的多方法数据集将被用来开发学生参与的概况，涉及青少年在科学学习过程中的认知、情感和行为状态。这些数据将有助于将研究工作集中、指导和沟通到实践。除了通过传统学术渠道产生和传播的知识外，该项目还将开发两种有形产品。第一个产品将是一个免费和公开提供的统计软件库或软件包，其中包括用开放源码编程语言和软件R进行以人为本的分析所需的工具和功能。这些工具将可供研究人员、学者和开发人员使用。第二个产品将是一个用户友好的指南，将向科学教育工作者通报参与概况和做法，以最有意义的方式吸引学生，包括那些来自科学领域代表性不足的群体的学生。学生参与指南将帮助教育工作者识别和回应学生围绕科学内容的参与，并设计可能支持更多参与的教案。该指南将用于专业发展和教师培训，对STEM学者和教育工作者产生影响，并在研究生和博士后参与研究活动时对他们进行培训。

The ECR (Education and Human Resources Core Research) program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that will generate foundational knowledge in the field. This study will investigate student engagement in science in the interest of of broadening participation in STEM fields. This will be an important undertaking since research shows that low student engagement is a major challenge for students from subpopulations often underrepresented in STEM fields. The research will help advance knowledge in STEM areas where empirical studies of student engagement have lagged behind theoretical work in this area. Few studies have measured student engagement holistically as a multifaceted construct for broadening participation in science. This study will advance knowledge in STEM education by identifying instructional contexts that foster optimal student engagement and by examining whether adolescent students' engagement profiles in science vary systematically by gender, grade, race/ethnicity, and the intersection of these factors. It will serve the national interest by investigating the extent to which engagement profiles are consistent across and related to features of the science learning context, achievement and persistence-related outcomes; and if these relationships differ by gender, grade, race/ethnicity, and the intersection of these factors. The study will also examine how science educators respond to the identified profiles and to variations observed, and will use this knowledge in designing materials to disseminate findings to practitioners. This project will use a person-oriented analytic approach to examine individual differences and contextual variation in students' engagement in different science learning environments, and to link engagement patterns to students' achievement and persistence in STEM fields. Rich multi-method data sets will be used to develop profiles of student engagement involving adolescents' cognitive, affective, and behavioral states during the science learning process. These data will be instrumental in focusing, guiding, and communicating research efforts to practice. In addition to the knowledge generated and disseminated through traditional academic outlets, the project will develop two tangible products. The first product will be a free and publicly available statistical software library, or package, of tools and functions needed to conduct person-oriented analysis in R, the open-source programming language and software. These tools will be available for researchers, scholars, and developers. The second product will be a user-friendly guide that will inform science educators about engagement profiles and practices that engage students, including those from underrepresented groups in science, in the most meaningful ways. The guide to student engagement will help educators identify and respond to student engagement around science content, and to design lesson plans that may support greater engagement. The guide will be used for purposes of professional development and teacher preparation, impacting STEM scholars and educators, and training graduate students and post-doctoral fellow as they take part in research activities.