Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Yvonne Kao

Institution: WestEd

Over the last decade, the Computer Science for All movement has worked to broaden participation in computer science for students in every grade band. The Computer Science for All movement popularized visual, or block-based, programming languages. These languages allow students to program through a graphical user interface, dragging and dropping blocks of code into place. Because students do not have to type or memorize syntax, block-based languages can make programming more accessible to...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Ross J Benbow

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

The project expands a prior study by examining the links between social support networks and persistence along STEM career pathways among “student service members/veterans,” defined as undergraduate students who are retired/discharged military veterans. Building on current surveys in the State of Wisconsin, the study extends the data collection along three dimensions. First is longitudinally along the population’s academic trajectories encompassing several data collection points over five...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Cari F Herrmann Abell

Institution: BSCS Science Learning

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) organizes goals for student learning along three dimensions: (1) scientific and engineering practices such as developing and using models; (2) crosscutting concepts such as cause and effect; and (3) disciplinary core ideas which includes foundational ideas from the life, physical, and earth sciences, and engineering and technology. Students in 44 states are being or will soon be held accountable to science standards based on the...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Heather L Thiry

Institution: University of Colorado at Boulder

This project focuses on a critical juncture in the STEM education and workforce pipeline, the transition of community college students into baccalaureate degree programs and potentially to graduate school. This transition period is especially important for students from groups that are underrepresented in their overall participation in STEM fields of study. The goal of the investigators is to understand how STEM transfer students use assets, such as disciplinary co-curricular opportunities...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: William J Therrien

Institution: University of Virginia Main Campus

Scientific literacy is essential for everyone. Unfortunately, many students with learning disabilities (LD) do not do well in science and, in turn, have limited career opportunities in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). For students’ with LD, difficulties in science start early, with a large achievement gap between students with LD and typically achieving peers evident by early elementary school. More concerning is that this science achievement discrepancy widens...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: EDU Racial Equity

Principal Investigator: Matthew S Wolfgram

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

While progress has been made to increase enrollment numbers and graduation rates for ethnic and racial minorities in STEM, significant disparities remain. More investigations and interventions are needed to improve the educational outcomes for students of color in STEM. As a group, Asian American students are often excluded from these inquiries because they have shown positive gains in STEM education and career attainment, constituting 13% of the science and engineering workforce. However, when...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Julie Aldridge, Nicole Else-Quest, Joseph Roy, So Yoon Yoon

Institutions: Ohio State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, American Society For Engineering Education, University of Cincinnati Main Campus

The ongoing lack of diversity in the engineering doctoral workforce remains a significant problem with far-reaching implications for the US economy. The long-term vitality of the US workforce relies on the full range of engineering career pathways being available to all Americans. A diverse STEM workforce is more creative and innovative. While the number of women completing STEM doctorates has risen, the proportion of women earning engineering doctorates remains low. And, in 2019, while 24.1%...

Effective: 2022-2026

Funding Type: CAREER

Principal Investigator: Ido Davidesco

Institution: University of Connecticut

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Attention is dynamic and tends to fluctuate between external and internal states, and thus focusing attention on an instructor in undergraduate science courses for a long period of time is extremely taxing. While external attention, the selection and modulation of sensory information (e.g., focusing on an instructor’s voice while ignoring background noise), has been studied extensively,...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Aramati A Casper, Sarah L Eddy, Amanda K Lane

Institutions: Colorado State University, Florida International University, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

This project examines how a more accurate curriculum about the diversity of sexes found across species, the role of the environment in sex determination, and the complex relationship between sex and gender can create a more inclusive environment for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming (TNG) students in undergraduate biology courses. Research indicates that rather than emphasizing the diversity of strategies and experiences that organisms have around sex, gender, and orientation,...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Wendy M Smith

Institution: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

2201486 AbstractThe disparity in achievement and access for students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM are well documented, but there remains a lack of attention to what to do with this knowledge and how to measure the impact of improvement efforts beyond pass rates and demographics. While many university mathematics departments value providing diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) student experiences, the faculty often do not have the professional training to engage with DEI...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Kimberly C Rogers

Institution: Bowling Green State University

Undergraduate mathematics courses are required foundational courses for almost all STEM majors, since science, technology, and engineering are all built on mathematical underpinnings. Therefore, effective mathematics instruction at the undergraduate level opens the door to these fields, making it possible for students to pursue studies in scientific and technical areas. Unfortunately, students typically cite ineffective or uninspiring classroom instruction in foundational mathematics courses as...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Alejandra J Magana-de-Leon

Institution: Purdue University

As society becomes increasingly globalized, STEM graduates are increasingly called upon to work with individuals from different cultures and backgrounds. Thus, organizations and governments expect STEM graduates to contribute as productive members and leaders of intercultural teams. This project is designed to conduct fundamental research on team cognition, an important component of teamwork training. Team cognition refers to the knowledge, interactions, and processes essential to effective...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Lizandra C Godwin

Institution: University of New Mexico

Advancing participation in engineering is significant for meeting NSF’s goals and benefits national priorities. The University of New Mexico aims to improve understanding of the impacts of Latinas’ undergraduate experiences on their graduate school and career aspirations in engineering. As a designated Hispanic-serving Institution, the University of New Mexico is an ideal site for this study. Through advancing knowledge of the impact of intersectional identities on interest in graduate...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Florencia K Anggoro, Dedre Gentner, Benjamin D Jee, Bryan Matlen

Institutions: College of the Holy Cross, Northwestern University, Worcester State University, WestEd

The goal of this project is to develop and test methods for training powerful thinking skills. Specifically, the research will explore techniques for improving students' analogical reasoning ability. The history of science has shown analogy to be a powerful tool in scientific discovery. And there is abundant evidence from laboratory and classroom studies that analogical comparison can improve students' ability to learn, especially in mathematics and science. For example, reading that sound...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Brendan R Eagan

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

The goal of the Quantitative Ethnography Institute is to increase the capacity of STEM education researchers to conduct quantitative ethnography (QE) to address fundamental questions in STEM education. A key challenge in STEM education research is using large amounts of rich qualitative data to develop models of student learning that accurately represent diverse learning processes and can be implemented at scale. QE helps mitigate this challenge by unifying quantitative and qualitative...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Chad Dorsey

Institution: Concord Consortium

Many of society’s biggest dilemmas and grandest opportunities involve extensive interpretation of complex data that vary across both space and time. Such spatio-temporal (ST) data stand at the forefront of the most critical decisions across practically all sectors of society, from making sense of changes in the climate and responses to the causes of socioeconomic differences to the understanding of global economic changes. Over the past few decades, analyzing and interpreting ST data has...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Catherine Mobley

Institution: Clemson University

The project examines STEM social and behavioral scientists’ identity formation to produce results that can be used in designing programs to attract a larger and more diverse pool of students to these disciplines. The study investigates factors that influence the development of STEM social scientists who will engage in transdisciplinary scholarship, whether some programs do so more extensively and more effectively than others, and in what ways and why. It provides a qualitative focus on...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: David S Yeager

Institution: University of Texas at Austin

Recently, psychological research on broadening participation in STEM has shifted from student-focused interventions (e.g., belonging or growth mindset interventions given to students) to context-focused interventions (aimed at instructors to create cultures of belonging or growth). Tools for evaluating the changes in instructors’ practices induced by these programs have been lacking, however. Popular self-report methods for instructors can be biased due to faulty recall or social desirability...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Virginia J Flood

Institution: SUNY at Buffalo

Active, collaborative learning approaches are widely seen as effective ways for students to learn undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, learning outcomes are highly contingent on the quality of the interactional processes in which students engage. There is a great deal of research on successful verbal communicational practices in group work, but little is known about how nonverbal communicational practices like gesture contribute to successful...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Kathleen Lynch

Institution: University of Connecticut

Sociodemographic inequities in children's science skills are already evident in the early school grades, and early disparities may contribute to long-run gaps in children's persistence and outcomes in STEM. To disrupt the nation’s long- standing and substantial inequities in science education and careers, interventions to strengthen early science learning are critical. This research synthesizes the cumulative impact of science, technology and engineering innovations on early childhood...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Dina Verdin

Institution: Arizona State University

The project aims to build the investigator’s capacity to conduct robust fundamental STEM education research by implementing a small-scale research project and a professional development plan. The research investigates how culturally responsive gamified activities impact STEM identity development and promote STEM pathways among students of migratory families. The project extends the efforts of the Migratory Student Summer Academy at Arizona State University that provides summer enrichment...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Allyson Flaster

Institution: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Advanced training and education in STEM are of critical importance for the nation’s workforce and economic status. Equitable access to graduate level training reduces barriers for individuals from minoritized groups. Standardized graduate exams are becoming less important in the graduate admissions process, which places a higher weight on letters of recommendation for the selection of graduate students for a program. This project focuses on examining the language used by mentors in describing...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Nicole C Kelp

Institution: Colorado State University

Broadening participation in STEM is critical on many levels, from the equity perspective of removing barriers for success for people from historically excluded groups and from the perspective of increasing knowledge in the field of STEM. Both people and scientific endeavors benefit from increasing inclusion. However, evidence indicates that students who experience marginalization due to their socioeconomic status, first generation college attendance, or race and ethnicity are underrepresented...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Colleen Ganley

Institution: Florida State University

Many children, adolescents, and adults experience math anxiety. Research has shown that math-anxious children typically continue to experience math anxiety as they get older. People with math anxiety tend to perform more poorly in math and are less likely to take advanced math courses or pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. Thus, tackling math anxiety early on is important for mitigating negative impacts later in life. This project will develop and test a...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Jennifer G Cromley

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

To better support college students in learning about science, it is important to understand how they make connections among the concepts and ideas as they are learning. Network Analysis (NA) has potential to enable new ways of analyzing student learning data to reveal such connections. This project seeks to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to apply the statistical techniques of NA to real-time data about students’ science learning. The principal investigator...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Marcos D Caballero, Noah D Finkelstein, Charles R Henderson, Scott P Simkins

Institutions: Michigan State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, Western Michigan University, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University

Research has shown that the use of evidence-based, student-centered instructional strategies helps to increase learning, retention, and equity in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses. However, it is also clear that commonly used change efforts have not made research-based instruction the norm in U.S. institutions of higher education. Outcomes from this synthetic research will be used to guide efforts to improve undergraduate STEM instruction to generate and...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Steve Bennoun

Institution: University of California-Los Angeles

This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing student learning in calculus with a teaching method called interleaving. Unlike the common practice of studying and practicing one topic at a time and them moving to the next topic, interleaving consists in intermixing the study and practice of different topics together. Research conducted in middle school mathematics classrooms shows evidence that interleaving can help improve student learning. Yet, it is currently unknown if...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER Institute

Principal Investigator: Karen Nylund-Gibson

Institution: University of California-Santa Barbara

The goal of the Institute on Equity-Oriented Mixture Modeling for Discipline-Based Education Research Scholars is to train Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) scholars in the use of mixture modeling to address pressing issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in STEM education. Mixture modeling is a powerful tool for uncovering heterogeneity in student experiences and providing a richer way of understanding the experiences of students typically underrepresented in STEM...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Wendy M DuBow

Institution: University of Colorado at Boulder

This study addresses the longstanding problem of the lack of diversity among persons studying and working in the field of computer science (CS). The statistics describing the gender and race/ethnicity of those who earn CS degrees tell a story of a discipline that has been slow to change. The percentage of CS undergraduate degrees that have been earned by women has barely risen in nearly two decades. The lack of representation of Hispanic, African American, and Native American students in...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Julianne Wenner

Institution: Clemson University

Families are children’s first teachers and significantly influence children’s interest, engagement, and aspirations (IEA) in science. Family attitudes, conversations about science, expectations for their children, and family science/STEM career role models can be influential, particularly for people who identify with populations that are underrepresented in science. However, what families from these populations provide in terms of support for IEA in science is often framed as inadequate or...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Ryan Baker, Nicole Else-Quest, Bruce M McLaren, Timothy J Nokes-Malach, Jon R Star

Institutions: University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, Harvard University

Despite evidence that gender differences in math achievement have narrowed or disappeared in recent decades, stereotypes about men being better than women at math emerge early in childhood and persist through adulthood. These perceptions appear to influence female students’ interest and performance in math, as well as their pursuit of STEM careers. Given the potential motivational benefits of digital learning games, games might provide a pathway for reducing math anxiety for female students...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Jacob Kirksey

Institution: Texas Tech University

The project aims to serve the national need to develop a diverse workforce in STEM careers. To address this need, institutions have developed course-based undergraduate research experiences in STEM to attract students to STEM careers. These research activities will produce evidence and insights about how course-based undergraduate research experiences in STEM are related to post-graduate workforce outcomes. Additionally, the research will identify pre-college student characteristics that...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Lauren Barth-Cohen, Sarah Braden

Institutions: University of Utah, Utah State University

Scientific observation is a ubiquitous discipline-specific skill that has been overlooked in contemporary science instruction. Instructional materials often treat scientific observation as a simple skill or a minor pedagogical challenge to be overcome. For secondary science teachers, challenges compound as they themselves are often emergent learners of this skill. Furthermore, the field has yet to develop explanatory frameworks for the development of expertise in observation. Existing research...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Ryan Stowe

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

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...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: James C Anglum, Tuan D Nguyen

Institutions: Saint Louis University, Kansas State University

This project aims to identify trends in the demographics and turnover behavior of the STEM teacher workforce. It focuses on specific remedies and investments needed to retain prospective teachers in high-need schools, especially rural communities, and to improve outcomes for their students. The project includes two complementary studies, one using the National Teacher and Principal Survey (an update from the earlier Schools and Staffing Survey) and a second, using longitudinal administrative...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Julie J Park

Institution: University of Maryland, College Park

This project will explore how Black undergraduate and graduate students in STEM view the relationship between religion and science, and the implications for their persistence in STEM. The project is of significance because religion and religious communities were recently identified as a vital source of support for many of Black students, although for STEM students the dichotomy between science and religion can be challenging. While numerous studies document perceived tensions between religion...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Lucas C Parra

Institution: CUNY City College

Education is moving online. During the global pandemic, this ongoing process accelerated and educators increasingly leveraged existing online video content to supplement synchronous remote instruction. One problem with this approach is that passive viewing of video content is not a particularly effective form of instruction. Many students struggle to sustain their attention to online video, and this is reflected in poor performance in subsequent tests of learning. This project will explore a...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Bailey Brown, Rebecca Zarch

Institutions: Spelman College, SageFox Consulting Group, LLC

This research project seeks to examine longstanding inequities in access to and participation in computer science (CS) education. Decades of research have shown that certain subgroups (e.g., women, students with disabilities, underrepresented minority students) tend to face substantial barriers to participating in CS courses and programs. As computing education continues to expand in K-12 education systems, it is important to understand how early experiences in computing education relate to...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: EDU Racial Equity

Principal Investigator: Tabbye M Chavous

Institution: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Persistent racial disparities are notable across STEM fields from who receives undergraduate degrees to the unequal opportunities and outcomes that hamper scientists’ careers later in life. Past research shows that contact with faculty, advising, and undergraduate research can reduce racial inequities, but it is not clear whether and how these work in all STEM fields. This project will explore how experiences like these create “STEM microclimates” for undergraduates with intersecting...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Lynn Stephens

Institution: Concord Consortium

It is increasingly vital that people be able to make sense of scientific data and extract information from public datasets in order to inform their decisions about everything from ballot initiatives on climate policy to personal choices about vaccines. The project has a long-term goal of broadening participation in STEM by making data literacy attainable by more students. The project will develop instructional design supports for high school students that build on their novice intuitions for...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Mohammad Amin Alipour

Institution: University of Houston

This project aims to serve the national interest by understanding the impact on computer science education of using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate computer code. Artificial intelligence tools can generate computer code from the description of a problem written in natural language, and it may lead to faster and easier development of high-quality software programs. While these “code intelligence” (CI) systems may positively improve workflow for professional developers in industry,...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: Adrianna Kezar

Institution: University of Southern California

This project addresses the fundamentally important question of who the faculty in the United States are, and how they advance knowledge and prepare the future workforce in STEM. Faculty are central to the success of higher education, and through teaching, research, and service, faculty contribute to the education of the future workforce in STEM, the advancement of knowledge, and the success of the higher education enterprise. Since 2004, when data was last collected for the National Study of...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Sara Hooshangi

Institution: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Participation in computer science by women is a significant goal for NSF and benefits the nation’s workforce in emerging technologies. Academic and career path decisions are made by individuals and understanding barriers that contribute to student selection of computer science careers may reduce the gender gap in this field. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University seeks to understand personal, social, and institutional constraints that influence the decision-making of first-year...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Fashina Alade

Institution: Michigan State University

Advancing participation in STEM is significant for meeting NSF’s goals and benefits the nation. Michigan State University aims to improve understanding of the impacts of STEM-focused children’s media programming by identifying children’s understanding of racial diversity cures in educational television shows. The professional development plan will build research capacity by exploring children's attention to and interpretations of diversity cues and then building a multi-method study that...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Roger E Beaty, Mark Fuge, Dan R Johnson

Institutions: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park, University of Maryland, College Park, Washington and Lee University

This collaborative project from research teams at Pennsylvania State University, University of Maryland, and Washington and Lee University focuses on measuring creativity in undergraduate engineering education. The ability to think creatively is essential for success in STEM fields, particularly engineering, which requires designing solutions to complex problems that often have no single or "correct" solution. The Next Generation Science Standards identify creative thinking skills, such as...

Effective: 2022-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigators: Kristen N Bieda, Megan E Staples

Institutions: Michigan State University, University of Connecticut

Creating and justifying mathematical claims is an essential learning goal and valued outcome of a mathematics education. To advance equitable learning outcomes, it is essential that teachers pursue this goal in ways that ensure every student has opportunities to develop and share justifications in their classrooms. The intended outcomes of this pilot study are: (1) practice-grounded, foundational knowledge about how students’ participation in mathematical justification can advance equity...

Effective: 2022-2024

Funding Type: ECR:Core

Principal Investigator: James R Neumeister

Institution: National Opinion Research Center

This research project focuses on understanding the experiences and perspectives of marginalized groups in STEM fields. Three aims frame the project team's research plan. First is to examine factors that influence and predict career trajectories of subgroups of STEM doctoral students and graduates based on their career motivations and aspirations. Second is to develop and integrate culturally responsive student and context-level measures to investigate the career pathways of STEM PhD students....

Effective: 2022-2024

Funding Type: Conference

Principal Investigator: Erin M Lynch

Institutions: Winston-Salem State University, QUALITY EDUCATION FOR MINORITIES NETWORK

Pipelines to Pathways: Humanizing Diversity in STEM, is proposed to improve mentorship and training in emerging research designed to improve STEM student outcomes, particularly for those students coming from underserved and underrepresented populations in STEM. This two-day workshop is designed to attract STEM faculty, both K-12 and post-secondary, and research scholars in STEM teaching and student learning to present and learn about evidence-based practices and methodology design to implement...

Effective: 2022-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Christopher A Randles

Institution: The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees

To meaningfully understand a discipline, students not only need to remember concepts but also understand how those concepts connect to one another. Understanding connections between concepts requires students to engage with their discipline in ways such as using visual representations (e.g. diagrams and graphs), experimental activities (e.g. testing hypotheses), societal influences (e.g. the nature of science and society), and information literacy (e.g. how information is presented and used)....

Effective: 2022-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Tim McEldowney

Institution: West Virginia University Research Corporation

This project aims to illuminate how undergraduate student knowledge about the graduate school application and admissions processes acts as a barrier to earning advanced degrees in mathematics for students historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines. The project will consist of a combination of exploratory research and professional development activities to advance the PI’s expertise in quantitative and qualitative research methods. The project will survey undergraduate mathematics...