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  • Breaking Down Silos Working Meeting: An Approach to Fostering Cross-Disciplinary STEM–DBER Collaborations through Working Meetings
Title: Breaking Down Silos Working Meeting: An Approach to Fostering Cross-Disciplinary STEM–DBER Collaborations through Working Meetings
There has been a recent push for greater collaboration across the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in discipline-based education research (DBER). The DBER fields are unique in that they require a deep understanding of both disciplinary content and educational research. DBER scholars are generally trained and hold professional positions in discipline-specific departments. The professional societies with which DBER scholars are most closely aligned are also often discipline specific. This frequently results in DBER researchers working in silos. At the same time, there are many cross-cutting issues across DBER research in higher education, and DBER researchers across disciplines can benefit greatly from cross-disciplinary collaborations. This report describes the Breaking Down Silos working meeting, which was a short, focused meeting intentionally designed to foster such collaborations. The focus of Breaking Down Silos was institutional transformation in STEM education, but we describe the ways the overall meeting design and structure could be a useful model for fostering cross-­disciplinary collaborations around other research priorities of the DBER community. We describe our approach to meeting recruitment, premeeting work, and inclusive meeting design. We also highlight early outcomes from our perspective and the perspectives of the meeting participants.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1830860 1830897
PAR ID:
10192789
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
CBE—Life Sciences Education
Volume:
18
Issue:
3
ISSN:
1931-7913
Page Range / eLocation ID:
mr3
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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