Creating Autonomy-Supportive Learning Environments Using Undergraduate Student Pedagogy Advocates

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This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing learning environments in introductory STEM classes through the use of undergraduate students as collaborators and partners. This project hopes to advance understanding of ways in which undergraduate students, in partnership with instructors, can help to implement evidence-oriented teaching practices that support students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of these basic psychological needs in turn should foster the creation of student-centered, autonomy-supportive learning environments that increase student engagement, motivation, and ultimately success. This partnership between undergraduate students and instructors has the potential to bridge the gaps between these two groups. The significance of this project lies in the potential for such partnerships to implement pedagogical practices rooted in particular classroom, disciplinary, institutional, and cultural contexts. Students serving as partners and advocates are able to contribute their experience and knowledge to the process of generating, collecting, and interpreting feedback on teaching interventions rooted in evidence-based practices. This project will advance understanding of factors that lead to successful implementation and effective integration of research-based teaching practices in STEM to help foster student success.The goals of this project will be to study the factors leading to the effectiveness and successful implementation of pedagogical practices fostering autonomy-supportive learning environments, as taught in Purdue University’s IMPACT (Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation) initiative. The Student Pedagogy Advocates (SPA) program, drawing on the student-faculty partnership model, pairs faculty with undergraduate students (SPAs) not enrolled in the class. The SPAs attend and observe class sessions and meet weekly with faculty members to offer insights and perspectives on the classroom environment. The semester-long partnership between the student and faculty member creates an ongoing feedback loop to empower faculty to create and foster autonomy-supportive learning environments (ASLE) and support their students’ basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The research team will investigate the conditions under which the SPA model creates ASLE in large introductory STEM courses at a large public institution. The scope of this investigation will include classes across numerous STEM disciplines. The research team carry out its work by identifying underlying principles that make such partnership programs effective through a study of how the program fosters the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for instructors, SPAs, and students enrolled in these STEM classes. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its 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.