
Understanding how Making contributes to student self-efficacy and character development across multiple STEM disciplines and student identities
Effective Years: 2021-2024
This is a STEM education research capacity building project that incorporates a study to investigate the effect(s) of Making activities by examining domains of self-efficacy and character development and a professional development plan to build the investigator's subject matter expertise in self-efficacy and character virtue development and qualitative research design and methods. The research project aims to (1) develop Making activities that represent technical, conceptual, or dispositional competencies across STEM courses; (2) evaluate the impact of Making pedagogy on student self-efficacy; and (3) compare Making pedagogy outcomes across disciplines and student identity groups. The investigator will concurrently implement a professional development plan to acquire training and experience crucial to pursuing future work in student self-efficacy, character development, and interdisciplinary STEM education research.
The investigator will examine four research questions: (1) How do Making activities contribute to students’ self-efficacy in their course, discipline, and character development? (2) What characteristics of the Making activities contribute most to student self-efficacy in these domains? (3) How can we better understand the relationship between psychosocial factors, such as mindset and self-efficacy, in these domains? and (4) Are the contributions of Making on self-efficacy consistent across disciplines and underrepresented groups? The research will be framed partly by Bandura’s self-efficacy theory as part of the larger Social Cognitive Theory and Active Learning Pedagogies. The investigator will test an instrument that was developed in a preliminary project to examine self-efficacy in an engineering instrumentation and controls course that focused on aspects linked to entrepreneurial mindset: curiosity, creativity, and making connections. The project will be among the first interdisciplinary examinations of Making pedagogical practices at the institution in formal course settings. Faculty from STEM disciplines will be recruited to develop their Making intervention. The investigator will administer a survey instrument that will provide insights into disciplinary specific self-efficacy while examining common metrics of character and virtue development, specifically the character virtue of creativity. Exploratory factor analysis will be used to identify factors present across courses, semesters, and modes of Making. Linear mixed models will examine self-efficacy outcomes across discipline and student groups. The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) will be performed in all of the courses recruited for the study. The project is expected to produce materials for faculty development and improvements in instructional pedagogy.
This project is funded by the ECR: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research competition of the EHR Core Research (ECR) program. ECR supports fundamental STEM education research focused on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM fields, 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.