Broadening Participation Research Project: Understanding the role of culture in an intervention to increase the persistence of African American STEM students

这项拟议的项目将考察背景因素、职业规划技能、职业决定信心、心态、社会阶层和社会资本对STEM学生职业发展的影响。研究人员将调查这些因素对非裔美国STEM学生坚持不懈的影响。作为一项转化性研究，该项目将理论应用于实践，并展示了使用修订后的干预措施的影响，该干预侧重于发展非裔美国本科生STEM学生的职业管理技能。研究人员将提出证据，证明一种有效的方法来增加少数族裔STEM学生的留存率。该项目基于社会认知职业理论(SCCT)，采用混合方法设计来回答三个研究问题：(1)社会资本和社会阶层等SCCT定义的背景因素如何影响参与者获得STEM研究生学位的职业规划能力和意愿的变化？(2)旨在支持STEM专业的机构资源的增加如何影响干预的效果？(3)干预对参加过职业生涯管理干预的STEM学生有何长期影响？研究人员将获得与少数民族学生职业发展相关的干预和支持模式构建的影响的定量和定性信息。该项目预计将填补职业心理学和STEM坚持文献方面的空白，即将与职业发展相关的理论与代表性不足的少数群体与非裔美国STEM学生的有效职业干预、成长心态和学术坚持研究相结合。该项目由历史上的黑人学院和大学本科项目资助，扩大了对STEM教育研究轨道的参与。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。

The proposed project will examine the impact of contextual factors, career planning skills, confidence in career decision, mindset, social class, and social capital on career development of STEM students. Researchers will investigate the tole of these factors on African American STEM student persistence. As a translational research study, the project grounds theory in practice and demonstrates the impact of using a revised intervention focused on developing the career management skills of African American undergraduate STEM students. The researchers will produce evidence of an effective method for increasing the retention of minority STEM students. Grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), the project follows a mixed methods design to answer three research questions: (1) How do SCCT-defined contextual factors such as social capital and social class affect the change in participants’ career planning abilities and intentions to obtain a graduate degree in STEM? (2) How does an increase in institutional resources designed to support STEM majors impact the efficacy of the intervention? and (3) What is the long-term impact of the intervention on STEM students who participated in the prior career management interventions? Researchers will obtain quantitative and qualitative information on the impact of the intervention and support model building related to career development of minority students. The project is expected to fill a gap in the vocational psychology and STEM persistence literature, i.e., the integration of theory related to career development with underrepresented minorities with research on effective career intervention, growth mindset, and academic persistence for African American STEM students. This project is funded by the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, broadening participation in STEM education research track.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.