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

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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.