How Do Unrepresentative College Grades Shape Race and Gender Gaps in the STEM Pipeline?

虽然课程成绩是教师与学生交流学习成绩的主要方式，但关于大学生如何对成绩进行不同解释的研究较少。 因此，对成绩的不同反应可能是学生攻读STEM学位的一个原因，因此可能是STEM学位中有据可查的性别和种族/民族差距的一个重要因素。然而，先前的研究检验这一假设，在很大程度上限于分析来自个别课程或单一学院的数据，因此不能排除基于学生学业成绩的其他方面或学生就读的机构的其他方面的替代解释。同样，以前的研究也无法解释影响学生最终成绩的因素，比如个人困难。该项目建议通过检查北卡罗来纳州系统所有校区所有STEM课程的学生成绩来应对这些挑战。该研究将包括对COVID-19造成的2020年春季中断的分析，并将考虑学生在2020年春季获得的潜在不具代表性的成绩可能如何影响他们随后选择STEM课程。 该项目旨在生成学生对成绩的不同敏感度如何影响STEM管道中种族和性别差距的大小的可推广估计。了解这些反应有可能让学校设计更公平的评分系统，更好地定制咨询计划和资源，以支持学生追求STEM专业。项目团队将采用混合方法，以更好地了解不具代表性的成绩是否会改变学生通过STEM管道的轨迹，这些变化是否会因学生的种族/民族或性别而异，以及当学生收到不具代表性的成绩时，各系如何建议他们。该团队将使用2015-16学年至2023-24学年北卡罗来纳州系统15个校区的学生成绩单数据，根据2020年春季STEM课程中学生是否获得了异常的高分或低分，比较STEM专业学生的轨迹。此外，该团队计划采访学术顾问从样本的STEM部门在STEM系统，以更好地了解指导学生收到关于如何解释他们的成绩时，决定是否追求STEM学位。该项目的一个潜在的更广泛的影响是告知有关评分政策和学术建议的知识，旨在减少STEM参与的成就差距。该小组计划在学术期刊上传播研究结果，并以政策简报和介绍的形式向地方和区域利益攸关方分发研究结果。 该项目由EHR核心研究（ECR）计划资助，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，以及STEM劳动力发展的工作。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

While course grades are a primary way instructors communicate with students about their academic performance, there is less research on how grades are interpreted differently by college students. As a result, differential responses to grades may affect which students pursue STEM degrees and may therefore be an important contributing factor in the well documented gender and race/ethnicity gaps in STEM degrees. Prior studies examining this hypothesis, however, have been largely limited to analyzing data from individual courses or from single colleges and therefore cannot rule out alternative explanations based on other aspects of a student’s academic record or aspects of the institution where the student is enrolled. Likewise, previous studies have not been able to account for factors influencing students’ final grades in a course, such as a personal hardship. This project proposes to address these challenges by examining student grades across all STEM courses at all campuses in the University of North Carolina system. The study will include analyses of the Spring 2020 disruption caused by COVID-19 and will consider how the potentially unrepresentative grades students received in Spring 2020 may have shaped subsequent choices to pursue STEM coursework. This project intends to generate generalizable estimates of how students’ differential sensitivity to grades may affect the size of race and gender gaps in the STEM pipeline. Understanding these responses has the potential to allow schools to devise fairer grading systems and better tailor advising programs and resources to support students pursuing STEM majors.The project team will employ a mixed-methods approach to better understand whether unrepresentative grades change students’ trajectories through the STEM pipeline, whether these changes vary with students’ race/ethnicity or gender, and how departments advise students when they receive unrepresentative grades. The team will use student transcript data from 15 campuses in the University of North Carolina system from the academic years 2015-16 through 2023-24 to compare the trajectories of students in STEM majors based on whether they received uncharacteristically high or low grades in STEM courses in Spring 2020 compared to what might be expected based on the performance of prior cohorts of students. In addition, the team plans to interview academic advisors from a sample of STEM departments in the UNC system to better understand the guidance students receive about how to interpret their grades when deciding whether to pursue a STEM degree. One potential broader impact of this project is inform knowledge about grading policies and academic advising with an aim to reduce achievement gaps in STEM participation. The team plans to disseminate results in academic journals and distribute findings among local and regional stakeholders in the form of policy briefs and presentations. This project is funded by the EHR Core Research (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.