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，资源的使用对本科STEM学生的学业成功至关重要。以前的工作已经揭示了学生对特定资源的使用与他们的学术成果之间的显着关系，以及资源使用与社会人口因素之间的显着关系（例如，性别认同、社会经济地位、种族）。在美国，不同的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。该项目旨在调查本科生使用的资源，以及如何可能与他们在高等教育中的成功。洞察力将开发如何从历史上被排斥的群体的学生参与资源。这项研究希望通过增加历史上被排斥的群体在STEM中的参与来造福社会。该项目以跨部门的透镜关注边缘化群体在STEM领域的经验和需求，目的是影响高等教育政策和程序。该项目采用新颖的多元方法来研究变量之间的关系。具体来说，这个项目的目的是测试学生资源的使用是否介导社会人口因素和学术成果之间的关系。此外，定性的方法将被用来探讨学生的期望，价值观和社会人口因素之间的关系，并最终驱动学生使用资源。使用期望值理论的帮助来源作为一个理论框架，大约4,000名本科生在介绍生物学课程在七个合作机构将进行调查。聚类分析将确定具有类似资源使用模式的参与者。资源使用集群，然后将被用作一个多层次的中介分析中的中介变量。采访将从不同的集群，社会人口特征和学术成果的参与者样本。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学生成绩中现存的差距至关重要，旨在使用基于优势的交叉方法来做到这一点。拟议的研究承认，学生往往持有多重，交叉的身份，影响他们在高等教育的经验。通过了解历史上被排斥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定制资源建议，以满足学生的独特需求和背景。该项目由NSF的STEM教育博士后研究奖学金（STEM艾德PRF）计划支持，并由The Kaleta A.杜林基金会。STEM教育博士后研究奖学金（STEM艾德PRF）计划旨在提高STEM，STEM教育，教育和相关学科的近期博士学位的研究知识，技能和实践，以促进他们的准备，从事基础和应用研究，在该领域内推进知识。Kaleta A.杜林基金会通过与美国国家科学基金会的合作，旨在促进STEM/STEM教育研究队伍的更大多样性。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。

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.