ECR Projects

Explore past and current fundamental STEM education research projects across the three research areas that NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program funds, as well as across ECR funding types. Other search filters draw from both NSF's data and the ECR Hub's hand coding of award abstracts.

Ninth-grade biology students create cell models using clay.

Home > ECR Projects Search > Project Detail
STEM Learning and Learning Environments STEM Learning and Learning Environments  

Mapping Epistemologies that Shape College Chemistry Instructors' Assessment Practices

Effective Years: 2022-2025

To prepare learners to productively use scientific knowledge as they navigate life, science courses must develop students’ understandings of what it means to know and learn science (i.e., their epistemologies). This project aims to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to conduct fundamental chemistry education research that investigates both instructors’ and students’ epistemologies in the context of organic chemistry courses. Studies indicates that instructors can send tacit messages about knowledge and knowing that shape the epistemologies students adopt. Thus, we need to better understand how science instructors can communicate the value of epistemologies useful in school and in life. This project assumes that epistemologies prevalent in science research laboratories (“doing science” epistemologies) have the potential to be more useful in life than epistemologies that are typical of science courses (“doing school”, such as memorizing facts and seeking a single correct answer to a problem). Thus, supporting instructors in activating "doing science" epistemologies in chemistry course examination contexts would be expected to lead to productive changes in learning environments. This project will map the epistemologies that shape instructors’ testing practices in organic chemistry courses. The project team will also explore ways to encourage instructors to adopt "doing science" epistemologies in course assessment scenarios. In the process of this work, the principal investigator will cultivate expertise in inferring tacit epistemological ideas from behavior via coursework and mentoring.

This project will integrate research and professional development objectives to support the principal investigator in developing the qualitative methods skills needed to achieve his long-term goals. The project is directed toward modeling the epistemologies that shape how and why organic chemistry instructors prompt for and respond to knowledge products in research and teaching settings. Across three years, the research team will explore the enacted epistemologies of three organic chemistry instructors who represent different roles and epistemologies in a chemistry department. The team will conduct semi-structured interviews focused on how and why instructors prompt for and respond to students’ knowledge products on exams, record research group meetings, and attempt to tip instructors into adopting "doing science" epistemologies in the context of teaching tasks in an interview setting. Both thematic and case-study analysis of epistemologies enacted while "doing science" and "doing school" will be used to support claims about productive epistemological ideas instructors have for attending to student thinking as well as when and how these ideas are activated. Throughout the process of eliciting, interpreting, and drawing implications from qualitative data, the project team will be mentored by an expert on epistemology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The project team will have frequent meetings with the mentor to discuss targeted readings as well as progress and plans for the project. The PI will also complete coursework on qualitative methods. Project outcomes are expected to include rich descriptions of tacit epistemologies activated while prompting for and responding to knowledge products in different contexts, analytic methods for inferring instructors’ epistemologies from behavior, and development of the project team’s qualitative methods skills. The principal investigator will share findings via workshops, presentations, and research publications. The mentor and three- member advisory board of experts in epistemological learning will assess the success of the project. The project is supported by NSF's EHR Core Research Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program, which is designed to build investigators’ capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research.

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.