Collaborative Research: Sharing Scientist Role Model Stories to Improve Equity and Success in Undergraduate STEM Education

This IUSE Level 3 Engaged Student Learning project aims to serve the national interest by developing and testing classroom materials that maximize the positive effects of scientist role models in undergraduate biology. This project addresses the question, “Which elements of role model success stories are effective in improving equity and success in undergraduate STEM education?” In undergraduate classrooms today, most of the scientists featured do not reflect the diverse scientific community, nor do they match the identities of students reached by these resources. One way to combat this mismatch is to create new materials that highlight scientist role models with diverse backgrounds and identities. Featuring scientist role models in courses is a scalable way to promote the success of students with marginalized identities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Previous research has found that the impact of role models can depend on the ways their stories are told and shared in classroom materials. This work tests the theory that the success of scientist role models must feel within reach for students in order to create positive impacts. This project will develop and evaluate materials that combine scientist success stories with data literacy classroom exercises. The ultimate goal of this work is to give insight into how to effectively include scientist role models in instructional materials. It will also result in a new set of freely available, evidence-based, educational resources for undergraduate biology classrooms. The goal of this discipline-based education research study is to understand the impacts of how scientist role models are represented in curricula. This project will introduce students to scientist role model success stories using an innovative approach that combines data literacy activities with scientist profiles. Project personnel will design new teaching materials that address scientific content and data literacy objectives appropriate for introductory undergraduate biology courses and feature the research of scientist role models who identify with genders, race/ethnicities, or abilities that are historically excluded in biology. These new resources will be based on a combination of two previously established science education programs, Data Nuggets and Project Biodiversify. Using a network of introductory biology classrooms across the country, this project will expose students to activities featuring the same data literacy instruction but to different treatments that vary in information about the attainability of the role model’s success (e.g., an emphasis on prestigious accomplishments of the scientist or an emphasis on how scientists overcame barriers encountered in their pursuit of science). Likert-scale and open-response survey items will be used to measure the effects of different treatments on 1) perceived attainability of a science career, 2) motivation to pursue a career in science, 3) interest in quantitative biology, 4) identity as scientists, 5) science self-efficacy, and 6) engagement with activities across a national sample of introductory biology classrooms. This research will also result in the development and testing of publicly available curricular resources for introductory undergraduate biology courses that highlight scientists’ stories, while simultaneously linking to core content in biology and data literacy. The NSF IUSE: EDU 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.