Collaborative Research: Defining and Measuring Student Trust of Instructors in College STEM Courses

合作研究：定义和衡量学生对大学 STEM 课程教师的信任

• 批准号: 2000417
• 负责人: Mark Graham
• 金额: $ 38.13万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-10-01 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2000417&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Defining; Measuring; Student

This project aims to serve the national interest by conducting basic research to characterize key components of student trust in college STEM instructors and how that trust contributes to desired student outcomes. The project is an EHR Core Research (ECR) Level 1 award, focused on STEM Learning and Learning Environments. A consensus is emerging about the benefits of student-centered pedagogies, like active learning, for students in college classrooms. However, less is known about how psychological and social factors in a classroom affect student outcomes. Furthermore, psychosocial factors may be particularly important in innovative teaching contexts where students are learning in new, unfamiliar ways. This project targets the multidimensional psychosocial variable of trust. Most existing educational studies on trust focus on primary/secondary school contexts and examine trust indirectly through student-teacher interactions or through the teacher or organization, instead of the student. The limited previous efforts in college environments have examined whether college students perceive their relationship with their instructor as a trusting one, as defined by understanding, acceptance, and care. Such efforts showed that trust predicted student buy-in to course material, course engagement, final course grade, and intent to persist in science. Interestingly, trust was more important in achieving these outcomes than other variables such as growth mindset. However, this previous definition of trust does not include other key dimensions of trust or the dynamics of trust-building. This project seeks to examine college students’ trust in their instructor by using a more comprehensive theoretical framework of trust. Utilizing this framework, trust building between students and instructors in college STEM courses will be facilitated, and the impact of trust on desired student outcomes will be assessed. It is anticipated that this work will advance research on student trust within the college STEM course environment, and examine how building trust positively impacts student engagement, learning, and persistence.This research unifies theories from the education and psychology research literatures to define trust more fully in an undergraduate STEM course context. It seeks to address two important research questions: 1) What are the key dimensions of student trust of an instructor in large college STEM classrooms? and 2) How does student trust in the instructor relate to important student outcome variables (e.g., student commitment, engagement, intent to persist in STEM, and final course grade), and are there differential impacts for students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields as compared to other groups of students? This project targets large enrollment college STEM courses, not only because these courses are where most STEM students in the nation are taught (majors and non-majors alike), but also because large enrollment courses such as these can make it particularly challenging to develop “one-to-many” (i.e., “instructor-to-students”) trust relationships. To broadly define and measure trust, this research will be conducted in courses operating as traditional lectures as well as those using new, evidence-based teaching practices. This project intends to use a mixed methods approach for instructor and student data collection. Specifically, it will proceed through a process of taxonomy development, instrument construction, and instrument validation to create and iteratively improve a measure of student trust for use in higher education contexts. The expected result is the initial establishment of a comprehensive yet parsimonious measure of college students’ trust in their instructor. This project has the potential to serve the STEM education community’s ongoing emphasis on finding ways to increase students’ commitment and engagement in student-centered classrooms and in STEM majors more broadly. The proposed project is a joint effort between researchers at Yale University and the University of Connecticut and is supported by the ECR program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.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.

该项目旨在通过进行基础研究，确定学生对大学STEM教师的信任的关键组成部分，以及这种信任如何有助于预期的学生结果，从而服务于国家利益。该项目是EHR核心研究(ECR)一级奖项，重点是STEM学习和学习环境。关于以学生为中心的教学方法的好处，比如主动学习，在大学课堂上对学生的好处正在形成共识。然而，人们对课堂中的心理和社会因素如何影响学生成绩知之甚少。此外，在创新的教学环境中，心理社会因素可能尤其重要，因为学生正在以新的、不熟悉的方式学习。这个项目的目标是信任的多维心理社会变量。现有的关于信任的教育研究大多集中在中小学情境，通过师生互动或通过教师或组织间接考察信任，而不是通过学生。以前在大学环境中所做的有限努力已经检验了大学生是否认为他们与导师的关系是信任的关系，如理解、接受和关心所定义的那样。这些努力表明，信任可以预测学生对课程材料、课程参与度、最终课程成绩以及坚持科学的意图的接受程度。有趣的是，在实现这些结果方面，信任比增长心态等其他变量更重要。然而，这一先前对信任的定义不包括信任的其他关键方面或建立信任的动力。本研究试图通过一个更全面的信任理论框架来考察大学生对导师的信任。利用这一框架，将促进大学STEM课程中学生和教师之间的信任建立，并将评估信任对预期学生结果的影响。本研究将结合教育学和心理学的研究文献，对本科生STEM课程背景下的信任进行更全面的定义。它试图解决两个重要的研究问题：1)在大型大学STEM课堂上，学生信任教师的关键维度是什么？2)学生对教师的信任如何与重要的学生结果变量(例如，学生承诺、参与度、坚持STEM的意图和期末课程成绩)相关，以及与其他学生组相比，STEM领域代表性不足的学生是否会受到不同的影响？该项目以招生人数较多的大学STEM课程为目标，不仅是因为这些课程是全国大多数STEM学生(专业和非专业)的授课地点，还因为这样的大规模招生课程可能会使发展“一对多”(即“教师对学生”)的信任关系变得特别具有挑战性。为了更广泛地定义和衡量信任，这项研究将在传统课程和使用新的循证教学实践的课程中进行。本项目旨在使用混合方法收集教师和学生的数据。具体地说，它将通过分类学开发、工具构建和工具验证的过程来创建并反复改进用于高等教育背景下的学生信任衡量标准。预期的结果是初步建立一个全面而节俭的大学生对导师的信任衡量标准。该项目有可能服务于STEM教育界正在不断强调的，即寻找方法来增加学生在以学生为中心的课堂和更广泛的STEM专业中的承诺和参与。拟议的项目是耶鲁大学和康涅狄格大学的研究人员共同努力，并得到ECR计划的支持，该计划支持推进STEM学习和学习环境的基础研究，扩大对STEM的参与，以及STEM劳动力发展。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。