Collaborative Research: Defining and Measuring Student Trust of Instructors in College STEM Courses

该项目旨在通过开展基础研究来表征学生对大学STEM教师的信任的关键组成部分，以及这种信任如何有助于预期的学生成果，从而为国家利益服务。该项目是EHR核心研究（ECR）一级奖项，重点关注STEM学习和学习环境。以学生为中心的教学方法，如主动学习，对大学课堂上的学生的好处正在形成共识。然而，人们对课堂上的心理和社会因素如何影响学生的学习成绩知之甚少。此外，在学生以新的、不熟悉的方式学习的创新教学环境中，社会心理因素可能特别重要。这个项目的目标是信任的多维社会心理变量。现有关于信任的教育研究大多集中在小学/中学背景下，并通过师生互动或教师或组织间接地考察信任，而不是通过学生。以前在大学环境中有限的努力已经检验了大学生是否认为他们与导师的关系是一种信任的关系，这种关系由理解、接受和关心来定义。这些努力表明，信任预示着学生对课程材料、课程参与度、最终课程成绩和坚持科学的意图的认同。有趣的是，在取得这些结果的过程中，信任比成长心态等其他变量更重要。然而，之前对信任的定义没有包括信任的其他关键维度或信任建立的动态。本研究旨在运用更全面的信任理论框架，检视大学生对导师的信任。利用这一框架，将促进大学STEM课程中学生和教师之间的信任建立，并评估信任对期望学生成果的影响。预计这项工作将推进大学STEM课程环境中学生信任的研究，并研究建立信任如何对学生的参与、学习和坚持产生积极影响。本研究结合教育和心理学研究文献的理论，在本科STEM课程背景下更充分地定义信任。它试图解决两个重要的研究问题：1)在大型大学STEM教室中，学生对教师的信任的关键维度是什么？2)学生对教师的信任与重要的学生结果变量（例如，学生的承诺、参与、坚持STEM的意图和最终课程成绩）之间的关系如何？与其他学生群体相比，STEM领域中代表性不足的群体对学生的影响是否存在差异？这个项目的目标是大招生的大学STEM课程，不仅因为这些课程是全国大多数STEM学生（专业和非专业都一样）学习的地方，而且因为像这样的大招生课程可能会使建立“一对多”（即“教师对学生”）信任关系变得特别具有挑战性。为了更广泛地定义和衡量信任，本研究将在传统讲座和使用新的循证教学实践的课程中进行。这个项目打算使用一种混合方法来收集教师和学生的数据。具体来说，它将通过分类法开发、工具构建和工具验证的过程来创建和迭代地改进学生信任的度量，以用于高等教育环境。预期的结果是初步建立了一个全面而简洁的衡量大学生对辅导员信任的指标。该项目有潜力为STEM教育界提供服务，该教育界一直强调寻找方法，以提高学生在以学生为中心的课堂和更广泛的STEM专业中的参与度。拟议的项目是耶鲁大学和康涅狄格大学研究人员的共同努力，并得到了ECR计划的支持，该计划支持推进STEM学习和学习环境的基础研究，扩大STEM参与和STEM劳动力发展的工作。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 aims to serve the national interest by conducting basic research to characterize key components of student trust in college STEM instructors and how that trust contributes to desired student outcomes. The project is an EHR Core Research (ECR) Level 1 award, focused on STEM Learning and Learning Environments. A consensus is emerging about the benefits of student-centered pedagogies, like active learning, for students in college classrooms. However, less is known about how psychological and social factors in a classroom affect student outcomes. Furthermore, psychosocial factors may be particularly important in innovative teaching contexts where students are learning in new, unfamiliar ways. This project targets the multidimensional psychosocial variable of trust. Most existing educational studies on trust focus on primary/secondary school contexts and examine trust indirectly through student-teacher interactions or through the teacher or organization, instead of the student. The limited previous efforts in college environments have examined whether college students perceive their relationship with their instructor as a trusting one, as defined by understanding, acceptance, and care. Such efforts showed that trust predicted student buy-in to course material, course engagement, final course grade, and intent to persist in science. Interestingly, trust was more important in achieving these outcomes than other variables such as growth mindset. However, this previous definition of trust does not include other key dimensions of trust or the dynamics of trust-building. This project seeks to examine college students’ trust in their instructor by using a more comprehensive theoretical framework of trust. Utilizing this framework, trust building between students and instructors in college STEM courses will be facilitated, and the impact of trust on desired student outcomes will be assessed. It is anticipated that this work will advance research on student trust within the college STEM course environment, and examine how building trust positively impacts student engagement, learning, and persistence.This research unifies theories from the education and psychology research literatures to define trust more fully in an undergraduate STEM course context. It seeks to address two important research questions: 1) What are the key dimensions of student trust of an instructor in large college STEM classrooms? and 2) How does student trust in the instructor relate to important student outcome variables (e.g., student commitment, engagement, intent to persist in STEM, and final course grade), and are there differential impacts for students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields as compared to other groups of students? This project targets large enrollment college STEM courses, not only because these courses are where most STEM students in the nation are taught (majors and non-majors alike), but also because large enrollment courses such as these can make it particularly challenging to develop “one-to-many” (i.e., “instructor-to-students”) trust relationships. To broadly define and measure trust, this research will be conducted in courses operating as traditional lectures as well as those using new, evidence-based teaching practices. This project intends to use a mixed methods approach for instructor and student data collection. Specifically, it will proceed through a process of taxonomy development, instrument construction, and instrument validation to create and iteratively improve a measure of student trust for use in higher education contexts. The expected result is the initial establishment of a comprehensive yet parsimonious measure of college students’ trust in their instructor. This project has the potential to serve the STEM education community’s ongoing emphasis on finding ways to increase students’ commitment and engagement in student-centered classrooms and in STEM majors more broadly. The proposed project is a joint effort between researchers at Yale University and the University of Connecticut and is supported by the ECR program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, 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.