Collaborative Research: Improving Biology Undergraduates’ Success by Fostering Positive Beliefs About Intellectual Abilities

该项目旨在通过实施基于证据的干预措施来提高学生在大学生物学入门课程中的表现和公平性，从而为国家利益服务。研究表明，当学生相信自己的智力可以提高时，他们会表现出更大的动力和适应挑战的能力。这些学生最终比那些认为自己的智力是固定的学生有更好的学习成绩。这个项目将设计干预措施来培养积极的学生信念。这些干预措施将根据其实施的文化和体制背景进行定制。该项目将包括开发、实施和评估干预措施的短期和长期心理和学术成果，以帮助生物学入门专业的本科生对自己的能力有更积极的信念。干预措施的有效性将通过一种新的、高质量的学生信念测量来评估。该项目将回答与实施干预措施和这项工作背后的心理学理论相关的紧迫研究问题。这个项目的意义将包括促进对心理学理论的理解和改善所有学生的教育成果。重要的是，该项目特别有利于在高等教育中遇到额外障碍的学生，有可能提高学术成果的公平性。这些学生包括第一代大学生，来自传统上在STEM领域代表性不足的群体，以及其他边缘化群体。该项目将解决三个最紧迫的研究问题，以促进对如何使用心态干预来提高学生在科学方面的成功和公平的理解。该项目的研究问题包括：(1)学生和教师这两个不同层面的心态干预是如何独立地或协同地影响学生的学习成绩的？(2)学生和教师层面的心态干预在短期和长期影响学生课堂体验、学术投入和学术成果的机制是什么？(3)学生的种族/民族身份和大学时代如何调节任何已确定的影响？这些问题将通过在四个站点（N10,000名学生）的生物学入门课程中进行大规模，完全交叉，随机分配的实地实验来解决。成长型思维干预已显示出巨大的潜力，可以以后勤简单、成本效益高的方式解决大规模教育不平等问题。本项目将通过调查教师的心态信息如何提高本科阶段干预的有效性来利用这一潜力。这项工作不仅将通过解决社会不平等问题以扩大STEM的参与而产生广泛的影响，而且还将通过对上下文信息如何调节干预效果产生更细致的理解而具有智力价值。NSF IUSE: EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。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 implementing evidence-based interventions to improve student performance and equity in college introductory biology courses. Research suggests that students exhibit greater motivation and resilience to challenges when they believe that their intellectual abilities can improve. These students ultimately have better academic outcomes than those who believe their intellectual abilities are fixed. This project will design interventions to foster positive student beliefs. The interventions will be customized to the cultural and institutional context in which they will be implemented. This project will involve developing, implementing, and assessing the short-term and long-term psychological and academic outcomes of interventions to help undergraduate introductory biology students adopt more positive beliefs about their abilities. The interventions’ effectiveness will be assessed using a new, high-quality measure of students’ beliefs. This project will answer pressing research questions related to implementing interventions and the psychological theories underlying this work. The significance of this project will include advancing the understanding of psychological theory and improving educational outcomes for all students. Importantly, this project has potential to improve equity in academic outcomes by being especially beneficial for students who encounter additional barriers in higher education. These students include those who are first-generation college students and those from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM, among other marginalized groups. This project will address three of the most pressing research questions to advance the understanding of how mindset interventions could be used to improve student success and equity in science. The project’s research questions include: (1) How do mindset interventions at two different levels, student and instructor, affect student outcomes independently and in concert? (2) What are the mechanisms through which mindset interventions at both the student- and instructor-level influence students’ experiences in the classroom, academic engagement, and academic outcomes in the short and long term? And (3) How do students’ racial/ethnic identity and generation in college moderate any identified effects? These questions will be addressed by carrying out large-scale, fully-crossed, randomly-assigned field experiments in introductory biology courses at four sites (N10,000 students). Growth mindset interventions have shown great potential to address large-scale educational inequities in logistically simple, cost-effective ways. This project will capitalize on this potential by investigating how mindset messages from instructors enhance the effectiveness of interventions at the undergraduate level. This work will not only have broad impacts by addressing social inequities to broaden participation in STEM, but will also have intellectual merit by generating a more nuanced understanding of how contextual messages moderate intervention effectiveness. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.