Collaborative Research: Diversifying and Humanizing Scientist Role Models to Increase the Impact of Data Literacy Instruction on Student Interest and Retention in STEM

该项目旨在通过帮助改善本科生生物学教育和扩大美国STEM劳动力的参与来服务于国家利益。本科教育资源通常不能代表科学工作者的全部知识。它们也不能代表STEM课堂上学生的多样性。这些不匹配可能会对学生产生负面影响，例如助长刻板印象威胁和冒名顶替者综合症，降低学生的课程表现，并增加学生退出STEM专业的可能性。因此，在课堂上增加科学家榜样的多样性可能会对学生产生积极影响。然而，还需要更多的工作来了解不同教育方法的具体影响，以及它们在提高STEM学生的表现、招生和留住学生方面的作用。为了满足这一研究需求，项目团队将研究一组不同的科学家榜样对学生在本科生物学课程中的表现和保持能力的影响。这项研究的结果将增加对教材中包含不同科学家榜样如何影响学生对STEM课程和职业的态度的理解。该项目还将制作一套新的免费提供的、经过研究测试的教育资源，供公众在生物课堂上使用。这项以学科为基础的教育研究研究将评估向本科生介绍一套不同的科学家榜样与定量数据素养教学相结合的影响。项目人员将设计新的教材，为本科生物学入门课程解决适当的科学内容和数据素养目标，同时突出不同性别、能力和种族/民族的科学家榜样。这些资源将基于之前建立的两种科学教育方法的组合，即数据掘金和生物多样化项目。研究性学习的设计将改变生物入门课堂上学生与来自不同背景的科学家榜样的人性化元素的深度，以确定哪些方面推动了组合教学材料的有效性。通过全国各地的生物入门课堂网络，学生将体验三种待遇之一，所有这些待遇都采用相同的核心内容和数据素养指导，但在纳入科学家身份和背景信息方面有所不同。利用在线学生调查数据，该项目将评估治疗对学生兴趣、课程参与度和STEM职业招聘/保留指标的影响。这项研究还将导致开发和测试公开可用的课程资源，用于生物入门本科课程，突出科学家的故事，同时与生物学和数据素养的核心内容相联系。NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by helping to improve undergraduate biology education and broaden participation in the U.S. STEM workforce. Undergraduate educational resources typically do not represent the full breadth of the people in the scientific workforce. They also fail to represent the diversity of students in STEM classrooms. These mismatches can have negative effects on students, such as contributing to stereotype threat and imposter syndrome, reducing student course performance, and increasing the likelihood that students will drop out of STEM majors. Thus, increasing the diversity of scientist role models in classrooms is likely to have positive impacts on students. However, more work is needed to understand the specific impacts of different educational approaches and their role in increasing the performance, recruitment, and retention of students in STEM. To address this research need, the project team will study the impact of a diverse set of scientist role models on student performance and retention in undergraduate biology courses. Results of this research will increase understanding about how inclusion of diverse scientist role models in instructional materials affects student attitudes towards STEM courses and careers. The project will also produce a new set of freely available, research tested, educational resources for public use in biology classrooms. This discipline-based education research study will evaluate the impact of introducing a diverse set of scientist role models to undergraduate students in conjunction with quantitative data literacy instruction. Project personnel will design new teaching materials that address appropriate scientific content and data literacy objectives for introductory undergraduate biology courses and simultaneously highlight scientist role models from diverse genders, abilities, and race/ethnicities. These resources will be based on a combination of two previously established science education approaches, Data Nuggets and Project Biodiversify. The research study design will vary the depth to which students in introductory biology classrooms engage with humanizing elements of scientist role models from diverse backgrounds to determine which aspects drive the efficacy of the combined instructional materials. Through a network of introductory biology classrooms across the country, students will experience one of three treatments, all of which apply the same core content and data literacy instruction but vary in the inclusion of information on scientist identity and background. Using online student survey data, the project will assess the impact of treatments on student interest, course engagement, and indicators of recruitment/retention in STEM careers. This research will also result in the development and testing of publicly available curricular resources for introductory undergraduate biology courses that highlight scientists’ stories, while simultaneously linking to core content in biology and data literacy. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.