Collaborative Research: Scalable Storytelling Interventions to Support Graduate Student Success in STEM

博伊西州立大学和犹他州立大学获得了美国国家科学基金会研究生教育创新（IGE）奖，该奖项试点了一项讲故事的干预措施，以增强学生在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）研究生学位中的职业认同和归属感，并减少骗子行为。传统上，STEM研究生培训更多地侧重于灌输技术内容专业知识，而不是培养归属感和STEM身份，这对研究生在STEM项目中的保留和成功至关重要。这个项目通过开发一个基于群体的项目来解决这些缺失的部分，在这个项目中，学生们通过编写和分享关于他们自己的变革故事来学习和应用讲故事的技巧。在与The Story Collider（一个旨在通过讲故事促进科学多样性和包容性的非营利组织）的新颖合作的帮助下，项目团队将在两所大学的学生中开发、实施和评估一种创新的个人讲故事干预的可移植性。每个项目年都将在公开表演中达到高潮，参与者将向大学和社区的同龄人以及利益相关者表演他们的故事。开源的讲故事课程将通过在线资源库提供给STEM教育社区，供他们分享和定制。本项目将扩展有效教学实践的教学知识，培养研究生成为STEM专业人员，并推进STEM教育和叙事心理学领域的理论知识。当STEM学生遇到激烈的智力和个人挑战时，通过讲故事来吸引他们进行反思，这种干预将使STEM研究生接受关于讲故事技巧的正式培训，然后促进他们在STEM研究生社区中实践这些技巧。培训和同伴互动的高潮是每个学生可能公开表演的个人故事。该项目考察了三个假设：(1)讲故事教学法将提高STEM研究生的职业认同感和归属感，并减少骗子感；(2)讲故事表演将加强学生的保留率和向STEM领域的过渡；(3)讲故事表演将减少观众对从事STEM职业的人的刻板印象。采用混合方法的研究方法，项目团队将回答三个研究问题：(1)学生写的关于他们在STEM研究生教育经历的个人叙述的主题和结构特征是什么？(2)学生对STEM研究生教育经历的个人叙述的发展和表现如何与他们的职业认同、归属感和冒名顶替感相关？(3)个人叙事的主题和结构特征与职业认同、归属感和冒名顶替三个专业构念之间的关系如何？项目团队将收集和分析混合方法数据，包括参与者的故事，焦点小组访谈，以及与职业认同，归属感和冒名顶替现象相关的自我报告测量。定量、定性和混合数据分析将用于确定讲故事干预如何影响与三个专业构念相关的研究生体验。研究生教育创新（IGE）项目专注于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试点、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛的社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to Boise State University and Utah State University pilots a storytelling intervention to enhance professional identity and sense of belonging and reduce impostorism among students pursuing graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Traditionally, STEM graduate training has focused more on instilling technical content expertise and less on cultivating feelings of belonging and STEM identity critical to graduate student retention and success in STEM programs. This project addresses these missing components by developing a cohort-based program wherein students learn and apply storytelling techniques through writing and sharing transformative stories about themselves. Aided by a novel collaboration with The Story Collider, a nonprofit organization that aims to foster diversity and inclusion in science through storytelling, the project team will develop, implement, and assess the transferability of an innovative personal storytelling intervention with students at the two universities. Each project year will culminate in public performances in which participant cohorts perform their stories to university and community peers and stakeholders. The open-source storytelling curriculum will be made available through online repositories for the STEM education community to share and customize.This project will expand pedagogical knowledge of effective instructional practices for developing graduate students into STEM professionals and advance theoretical knowledge in the fields of STEM education and narrative psychology. Using storytelling to engage STEM students in reflection at a time when they encounter intense intellectual and personal challenges, this intervention will engage STEM graduate students in formal trainings about storytelling techniques and then facilitate their practice of these techniques within a community of STEM graduate students. Training and peer interactions culminate in a personal story that each student may publicly perform. The project examines three hypotheses: (1) storytelling pedagogy will improve STEM graduate student professional identity and sense of belonging, and reduce feelings of impostorism, (2) storytelling performances will reinforce student retention and transition into STEM fields, and (3) storytelling performances will decrease the stereotyping among audience members of those who pursue STEM careers. Adopting a mixed-methods research approach, the project team will answer three research questions: (1) What are the thematic and structural characteristics of personal narratives that students write about their experiences in STEM graduate education? (2) How do students’ development and performance of a personal narrative about their experiences in STEM graduate education relate to their professional identity, sense of belonging, and feelings of impostorism? (3) How do the thematic and structural characteristics of personal narratives relate to the three professional constructs of professional identity, sense of belonging, and impostorism? The project team will collect and analyze mixed methods data, including participants’ stories, focus group interviews, and self-report measures related to professional identity, sense of belonging, and impostor phenomenon. Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed data analyses will be used to determine how the storytelling intervention influences graduate student experience related to the three professional constructs.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.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.