BCSER: Increasing Interest in Ecological and Environmental Sciences to Broaden Participation of African Americans in STEM

本项目探讨增加非裔美国人参与环境和生态科学的方法。该项目旨在通过设计和测试一项干预措施来实现这一目标，该干预措施旨在改善非洲裔美国人进入环境和生态科学项目和职业的招聘情况。该项目将支持探索性研究和专业发展活动的结合。专业发展计划的核心是帮助研究者获得定性研究方法方面的专业知识，并在正式的研究环境中与少数民族进行接触。专业发展活动将包括对学习地点的实地考察，教练和顾问的指导，以及参加相关会议。这个项目的目的是定位研究者进行长期的研究，以扩大生态和环境科学的参与。本研究项目以身份动机理论和不平等的文化错配理论为基础，运用社会科学构建对研究数据进行收集和分析。该项目有三个研究问题：(1)感知到的历史和当代约束是否影响学生对生态和环境相关STEM学科的追求？(2)干预是否会导致非裔美国人的身份和价值体系与对生态和环境相关的STEM学科的更大兴趣和动机保持一致？(3)干预是否会导致人们对生态完整性和生物多样性重要性的看法发生转变？干预将吸引本科生在夏季研究和丰富的经验，结合结构，以增加兴趣和动机，追求生态和环境学科。将收集有关经验有效性的试点数据，并使用定性方法进行分析。该研究将提供关于情境化干预对解决STEM教育研究课题的影响的见解。该项目得到了EHR核心研究：STEM教育研究能力建设（ECR: BCSER）竞赛的支持，该竞赛旨在培养个人在STEM学习和学习环境中开展高质量基础STEM教育研究的能力，扩大STEM领域的参与，以及STEM劳动力的发展。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 project explores approaches to increase the participation of African Americans in environmental and ecological sciences. The project aims to achieve this goal by designing and testing an intervention designed to improve the recruitment of African Americans into environmental and ecological sciences programs and careers. The project will support a combination of exploratory research and professional development activities. The professional development plan centers on helping the investigator acquire expertise in qualitative research methods and in the engagement of minority populations in a formal research setting. Professional development activities will include site visits to study locations, mentoring from coaches and advisors, and attendance at relevant conferences. This project aims to position the investigator to conduct longer term research towards broadening participation in ecological and environmental sciences.The research project is grounded in identity-based motivation theory and cultural mismatch theory of inequality, and uses social science constructs to collect and analyze the research data. The project has three research questions: (1) Do perceived historical and contemporary constraints influence students' pursuit of ecological and environmentally related STEM disciplines? (2) Does the intervention induce an alignment of African American identity and value system towards greater interest and motivation in ecological and environmentally related STEM disciplines? and (3) Does the intervention induce a shift in perceptions concerning the importance of ecological integrity and biodiversity? The intervention will engage undergraduate students in a summer research and enrichment experience that incorporates constructs to increase interest and motivation to pursue ecological and environmental disciplines. Pilot data will be collected on the effectiveness of the experience and analyzed using qualitative methods. The research will provide insights about the influence of contextualized interventions in addressing STEM education research topics.The project is supported through the EHR Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) competition that is designed to build individuals' capacity to carry out high quality fundamental STEM education research in STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM fields, and STEM workforce development.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.