IGE: Graduate Identity Formation through Teaching

美国研究生教育的一个主要目标是通过让学生专注于学习内容和开展研究，特别是在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）学科方面，培养独立的研究人员。学生们主要是为学术职业道路做好准备，尽管相当一部分STEM研究生继续从事非学术职业。因此，重要的是要把研究生教育的重点放在培养一种新型的学者上——一种具有强烈的职业认同感和灵活的工具集——而不是为特定类型的职业培养一个人。尽管在传统的研究生教育中经常被忽视，但事实证明，培养学生的职业身份可以提高保留率，促进学业成功，尤其是对那些代表性不足的学生。这项授予博伊西州立大学的国家科学基金会研究生教育创新（IGE）奖将测试一种教育模式，该模式通过与本科教育专业和小学生在STEM学习方面的合作，支持STEM研究生职业身份的培养。研究生通过该项目培养的教学和沟通技巧将被转移到不同的职业道路。GIFT（通过教学形成研究生身份）侧重于通过学科管理的概念来促进研究生的专业身份，专业人员不仅要学习他们学科的知识和技能，还要学习他们的学科如何与整个社会联系和服务。通过一学分的课程，研究生将对教育学以及与教与学有关的问题有更深入的了解。研究生们同时担任学科专家，向小学教师候选人教授与新一代科学标准相关的特定主题。随后，这些教师候选人将这些知识转化为15分钟的迷你课程，在当地一所一级学校为小学生授课。基于与博伊西州立大学四个STEM部门的跨学科合作，跨越六个学期，预计这项工作将为未来更广泛地支持研究生的干预提供可转移的低成本/无成本模式。采用定量和定性数据的综合纵向研究计划将能够对以下方面的干预进行分析：研究生职业认同发展，包括学生人口统计/属性的可变性；研究生指导老师对研究生教育目的的态度/观点；以及学术学科背景/设置对干预设计的影响，从而影响其可扩展性和可转移性。这项工作将为研究生教育、教育机会和STEM教育研究领域做出贡献。研究生教育创新（IGE）项目专注于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试点、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛的社区所需的知识。本提案由促进竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。EPSCoR共同资助促进科学和工程研究和教育卓越的项目。促进EPSCoR辖区内研究、教育和培训能力和竞争力的可持续增长，将使EPSCoR参与者能够更多地参与国家科学基金支持的领域。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A principal goal of U.S. graduate education is to prepare independent researchers by focusing students on learning content and conducting research, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Students have primarily been prepared for academic career paths although a significant proportion of STEM graduate students go on to non-academic careers. Therefore, it is vital to focus graduate education efforts on preparing a new type of scholar - one with a strong professional identity and a flexible set of tools - rather than preparing a person for a specific type of career. Although often neglected in traditional graduate education, the development of a student's professional identity is proven to raise retention rates and promote academic success, particularly for underrepresented students. This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to Boise State University will test an educational model that supports the cultivation of STEM graduate students' professional identities through collaboration with undergraduate education majors and elementary students in STEM learning. The teaching and communication skills that graduate students develop through the project will be transferable to diverse career paths.GIFT (Graduate Identity Formation through Teaching) focuses on the promotion of graduate student professional identity via the concept of disciplinary stewardship, wherein professionals learn not only the knowledge and skills of their discipline, but also how their discipline connects to and serves society as a whole. Through a one credit hour course, graduate students will develop a deeper understanding of pedagogy, as well as issues related to teaching and learning. The graduate students simultaneously serve as disciplinary experts as they teach elementary teacher candidates specific topics related to the Next Generation Science Standards. The teacher candidates subsequently turn this knowledge into 15-minute mini-lessons for elementary students at a local Title I school. Based on interdisciplinary collaborations with four STEM departments at Boise State, spread over six semesters, it is anticipated that this effort will provide a transferable, low/no-cost model for future interventions that support graduate students more broadly. A comprehensive, longitudinal research plan employing both quantitative and qualitative data will enable analysis of the intervention with respect to: graduate student professional identity development, including variability across student demographics/attributes; graduate faculty advisors' attitudes/outlooks on the purposes of graduate education; and the impact of the academic disciplinary context/setting on the design of the intervention, and hence its scalability and transferability. This work stands to contribute to the fields of graduate education, educational opportunities, and STEM education research.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community. This proposal is co-funded by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). EPSCoR co-funds projects that advance excellence in science and engineering research and education. Fostering sustainable increases in research, education, and training capacity and competitiveness within EPSCoR jurisdictions will enable EPSCoR participants to have increased engagement in areas supported by the NSF.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.