Collaborative Research: Measuring the Impact of Social Models in Undergraduate Science

This project aims to serve the national interest by developing new methods to understand how scientists inspire undergraduate STEM students and investigating curricular materials that improve student learning conditions to ultimately expand and strengthen the nation's scientific workforce. Scientists are increasingly featured in undergraduate educational resources to help students envision themselves in STEM careers. Although these efforts have been shown to improve student engagement and interest in science, researchers still do not know which aspects of how scientists are portrayed are effective for students, nor do they have validated tools to measure those aspects. The significance of this project is to address that gap by developing the first validated instrument designed to measure how undergraduate students perceive scientists. The project then aims to use this novel instrument to advance understanding of how different portrayals of scientists influence desirable student outcomes in STEM. The project team plans to create an openly available research instrument, practical guidance for educators, and evidence-based recommendations for curricular developers and scientists themselves. This project advances effective STEM educational practices, with scalable positive impacts on STEM undergraduates nationally. This project integrates the development of a survey instrument with large-scale randomized experiments that will inform the portrayal of scientists in curricular materials across the sciences. Phase 1 focuses on the development of a survey instrument that measures how students perceive scientists, including the scientists' competence, their relatability, and the attainability of their success. Developing this instrument involves a systematic literature review, expert interviews, cognitive think-aloud studies, iterative item refinement, pilot testing, and large-scale validation studies with undergraduate biology, chemistry, and physics students across institutions. Phase 2 focuses on using the survey instrument for a randomized experimental study that manipulates the portrayals of scientists in a widely adopted undergraduate biology textbook. Structural equation modeling will examine whether students' perceptions of scientists mediate the effects of these portrayals on STEM career interest, scientific self-efficacy, and motivation. The goals of this project are to generate a robust measurement instrument and provide empirical evidence to guide the design of instructional materials that increase participation in the nation's scientific workforce. The project team will develop a Researcher Toolkit to promote the adoption of the survey in future educational research and will disseminate research findings at scientific conferences and via open-access publications. This project is supported by NSF’s EDU Core Research (ECR) program and NSF's IUSE: EDU Program. The IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring. 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.