Postdoctoral Fellowship: STEMEdIPRF: Resource Use as a Mediator of Sociodemographic Disparities in Student Success

从办公时间到教科书，再到心理健康咨询，资源的利用对STEM本科学生的学业成功至关重要。先前的研究揭示了学生对特定资源的使用与其学业成绩之间的显著关系，以及资源使用与社会人口因素（如性别认同、社会经济地位、种族）之间的显著关系。在美国，不同学生群体的大学成功率各不相同。学生对资源的获取可能会导致这些差异。本项目旨在调查本科生使用的资源，以及这些资源与他们在高等教育中取得成功的关系。将深入研究历史上被排斥群体的学生如何利用资源。这项研究希望通过增加历史上被排斥群体在STEM中的参与来造福社会。该项目以交叉视角关注STEM领域边缘群体的经验和需求，目标是影响高等教育政策和程序。本项目采用一种新颖的多变量方法来检查变量之间的关系。具体而言，本项目旨在检验学生资源使用是否中介社会人口因素与学业成绩之间的关系。此外，定性方法将用于探索学生的期望、价值观和社会人口因素之间的关系，以及最终驱动学生使用资源的因素。以“帮助来源的期望价值理论”为理论框架，将对来自七所合作院校的大约4000名生物学入门课程的本科生进行调查。聚类分析将识别具有相似资源使用模式的参与者。然后，将资源使用集群用作多层次中介分析中的中介变量。访谈将从不同的群体、社会人口特征和学术成果中抽样调查参与者。这种先进的定量方法和密集的定性方法的结合将为学生如何以及为什么使用资源提供新的见解。这些信息对于解决STEM学生成绩的现有差距至关重要，旨在使用基于优势的交叉方法来解决这一问题。拟议中的研究承认，学生通常拥有多重交叉的身份，这些身份会影响他们在高等教育中的经历。通过了解历史上被排除在外的个人目前正在使用的成功策略，机构和教师可以利用这些知识来根据学生的独特需求和背景量身定制资源建议。本项目由美国国家科学基金会STEM教育博士后研究奖学金（STEM Ed PRF）项目支持，Kaleta A. Doolin基金会共同资助。STEM教育博士后研究奖学金（STEM Ed PRF）计划旨在提高STEM， STEM教育，教育和相关学科的近期博士的研究知识，技能和实践，以促进他们从事基础和应用研究的准备，从而推进该领域的知识。Kaleta a . Doolin基金会通过与美国国家科学基金会的合作，旨在促进STEM/STEM教育研究人员的更大多样性。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。

From office hours, to textbooks, to mental health counseling, the use of resources is essential to undergraduate STEM students’ academic success. Previous work has revealed significant relationships between students’ use of specific resources and their academic outcomes, and between resource use and sociodemographic factors (e.g., gender identity, socioeconomic status, race). College success rates vary among different student groups in the United States. Student access to resources may contribute to these differences. This project is designed to investigate the resources that undergraduate students use and how that might be related to their success in higher education. Insights will be developed on how students from historically excluded groups engage with resources. This research hopes to benefit society by increasing the participation of historically excluded groups in STEM. The project focuses an intersectional lens on the experiences and needs of marginalized groups in STEM with the goal of influencing higher education policies and procedures.This project utilizes a novel, multivariate approach to examine relationships among variables. Specifically, this project is designed to test whether student resource use mediates the relationship between sociodemographic factors and academic outcomes. Further, qualitative approaches will be used to probe the relationships between students’ expectations, values, and sociodemographic factors, and ultimately what drives students to use resources. Using Expectancy-Value Theory for Help Sources as a theoretical framework, approximately 4,000 undergraduate students in Introductory Biology courses across seven collaborating institutions will be surveyed. Cluster analysis will identify participants with similar resource use patterns. Resource use clusters will then be used as a mediating variable in a multilevel mediation analysis. Interviews will sample participants from across clusters, sociodemographic characteristics, and academic outcomes. This combination of advanced quantitative methods and intensive qualitative approaches will provide new insights into how and why students use resources. This information is critical to address extant disparities in student outcomes in STEM and aims to use a strengths-based, intersectional approach to do so. The proposed research acknowledges that students often hold multiple, intersecting identities that impact their experiences within higher education. By understanding strategies that historically excluded individuals are currently using to succeed, institutions and instructors can leverage this knowledge to tailor resource recommendations to students’ unique needs and backgrounds.This project is supported by NSF’s STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (STEM Ed PRF) Program with co-funding from The Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation. The STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (STEM Ed PRF) program that aims to enhance the research knowledge, skills, and practices of recent doctorates in STEM, STEM education, education, and related disciplines to advance their preparation to engage in fundamental and applied research that advances knowledge within the field. The Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation through a partnership with the National Science Foundation seeks to promote greater diversity within the STEM/STEM education research workforce.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.