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1. Instructor perspectives on quantitative reasoning for critical citizenship

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-023-01520-4  

   Foley, Gregory D.; Budhathoki, Deependra; Thapa, Amrit B.; Aryal, Harman P. (September 2023, ZDM – Mathematics Education)

   Abstract A tertiary course in Quantitative Reasoning (QR) has the potential to develop key practical and intellectual skills for citizenship, such as critical thinking, problem solving, quantitative literacy, and oral and written communication. In this article, we present research conducted on four instructors of such a QR course for students enrolled in a wide variety of nonscience degree programs at a university in the United States. The course used a student-inquiry approach to proportional reasoning, probability, statistical reasoning, and mathematical modeling. The findings are framed by a 5 C model of QR, which entailsCritical thinking to link real-worldContexts to mathematicalConcepts supported by studentCollaboration and QRCompetencies. The research addressed the questions of how university instructors support student development of the skills needed for critical citizenship and how this support relates to the 5 C model. We found that three of the four instructors viewed critical thinking as a central goal of the QR course and as supporting citizenship education. All four engaged students in tasks designed to develop a combination of skills associated citizenship, including critical thinking, self-questioning, collaboration, and communication. The discussion addresses such issues as the course’s merits and challenges, student engagement, the relative importance of the five Cs, the importance of instructional autonomy, and recommendations for related professional development and future research. 

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2. Backtracking CTE Pathways: Identifying and Investigating Pathways and Critical Junctures in Two-Year Information Technology Programs

   Mardis, M.A. Jones (January 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   This NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) research and development project aims to design and test a Backtracking Technique for understanding the pathways students take through college and into careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and career and technical education (CTE), with the focus of this project on information technology (IT). The project gathers data about current and former students who started in the same cohort, includes institutional research data (e.g., grades, demographics, course-taking) and merges these data with employment data from surveys and lived experiences obtained from interviews. These data are analyzed to identify potential pathways and critical junctions that may lead to student success or other outcomes. The research team is led by a doctoral granting institution and a community college, and includes four additional community colleges that collectively serve rural and urban student populations. In this paper we share the potential of the Backtracking Technique to generate contextualized career pathway data for institutions and create visualizations that can aid in institutional decision-making through a study pilot. The pilot is an initial effort to test the project’s aims of integrating institutional data with phenomenological data to model student progression through post-secondary STEM programs. The analysis will identify and verify influencers that support or hinder student success. Quantitative data analyses will consist of descriptive and comparative methods, which will be verified and informed by open coding and thematic analysis of the qualitative data. We share how the systematic investigation of institutional and phenomenological data used in the Backtracking Technique has the potential to: (1) generate practical knowledge about academic/career pathways in information technology for use by stakeholders; (2) identify and examine relationships among these pathways, students experiences, and psychosocial factors; and (3) add to the analytical methods available to institutional research professionals to document, investigate, and visualize student pathway information using data dashboards. This ATE project has great potential to transform the technician preparation for the advanced technology fields that drive the nation's economy. 

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3. Persistence Priorities and Financial Servingness in an Emerging HSI

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343220  

   Hug, Sarah (October 2023, IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   As the demographics in the United States college-going population continue to shift, the number of HSIs grows annually, yet research in higher education indicates a difference between enrolling Hispanic students in great numbers and serving the Hispanic/LatinX population [1,2] Servingness is embodied in structures and practices that constitute HSIs and is manifested in the acts of institutional agents who interpret policy, advocate for students, and access resources on behalf of students. This paper describes the findings from an initial case study of a public US East Coast Emerging Hispanic Serving Institution recently funded by the National Science Foundation to provide scholarships for high-achieving students with great financial need. To understand the financial barriers students face in attending college in a post-pandemic context, the first author interviewed key stakeholders at EAST STEM University. The research question driving the study was: How is EAST STEM changing its infrastructure to develop diverse support structures that serve students? Data for this pilot case study were collected from unstructured interviews with the lead faculty member of the grant in the computer science department, document analysis of institutional data (e.g., contextual data from the US Department of Education, publicly available information from Excellencia in Education, institutional profile data from the Institute of Educational Statistics), and from formal interviews with key stakeholders across the university. Interviews were transcribed and coded using emerging themes with Dedoose software. The staff interviewed in this study span five administrative offices and academic departments. Findings from this case suggest the institutional goals of promoting diversity and increasing persistence were values aligned with the acts of servingness utilized at East STEM University to advocate holistically for student needs [3]. Interviews with institutional agents indicate two ways the institution supported student progression through the major-through human resource allocation and through financial prioritization for equity. Within this institutional context, institutional agents enacted servingness through their emphasis on equity and persistence priorities, with, in some cases, a critical lens supportive of student success[4]. Key to their efforts in promoting persistence for students were three actions-creating space for one-on-one engagement with students, advocating on students' behalf across multiple administrative offices, and adapting and reinterpreting policies to support continued student enrollment. This study illustrates how institutional agents aligned serving with a key institutional initiative and how that alignment created space for innovation in meeting undergraduate students' financial needs. 

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4. CHARACTERIZATION OF UNDERGRADUATE BIOLOGY INSTRUCTORS’ GOALS AND STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING QUANTITATIVE REASONING

   Khushal, Anum (August 2025, University of Nebraska Digital Commons)

   Quantitative reasoning (QR) is the ability to apply mathematics and statistics in the context of real-life situations and scientific problems. It is an important skill that students require to make sense of complex biological phenomena and handle large datasets in biology courses and research as well as in professional contexts. Biology educators and researchers are responding to the increasing need for QR through curricular reforms and research into biology education. This qualitative study investigates how undergraduate biology instructors implement QR into their teaching. The study used pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and a QR framework to explore instructors’ instructional goals, strategies, and perceived challenges and affordances in undergraduate biology instruction. The participants included 21 biology faculty across various institutions in the United States, who intentionally integrated QR in their instruction. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data focusing on participants’ beliefs, experiences, and classroom practices. Findings indicated that instructors adapt their QR instruction based on course level and student preparedness. In lower-division courses, strategies emphasized building foundational skills, reducing math anxiety, and using scaffolded instruction to promote confidence. In upper-division courses, instructors expected greater math fluency but still encountered a wide range of student abilities, prompting a focus on correcting misconceptions in integrating math knowledge and fostering deeper conceptual understanding in biology. Many instructors reported that their personal and educational experiences, especially struggles with math, often shaped their inclusive and empathetic teaching practices. Additionally, instructors’ research backgrounds influenced instructional design, particularly in the use of authentic data, statistical tools, and real-world applications. Instructors’ teaching experiences led to refinement in lesson planning, pacing, and active learning strategies. Despite their efforts, instructors faced both internal and external challenges in implementing QR, including discomfort with teaching math, time limitations, student resistance, and institutional barriers. However, affordances such as departmental support, interdisciplinary collaboration, and curricular flexibility helped to overcome some of these challenges. This study highlights the complex relationships between instructors’ experiences, beliefs, and contextual factors in shaping QR instruction. This calls for professional development that supports reflective practice, builds interdisciplinary competence, and promotes instructional strategies that bridge biology and mathematics and will help instructors design a learning environment that better support students’ development of QR skills. These findings offer valuable guidance for professional development aimed at helping biology instructors incorporate quantitative reasoning into their teaching. Such efforts can better equip students to meet the quantitative demands of modern biology and promote their continued engagement in STEM fields through more inclusive and integrated instructional approaches. 

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5. Academic Success and Retention of Underprepared Students

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36635  

   Hensel, Robin A.; Dygert, Joseph; Morris, Melissa Lynn (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   The Academy of Engineering Success (AcES) program, established in 2012 and supported by NSF S-STEM award number 1644119 throughout 2016-2021, employs literature-based, best practices to support and retain underprepared and underrepresented students in engineering through graduation with the ultimate goal of diversifying the engineering workforce. A total of 71 students, including 21 students supported by S-STEM scholarships, participated in the AcES program between 2016-2019 at a large R1 institution in the mid-Atlantic region. All AcES students participate in a common program during their first year, comprised of: a one-week summer bridge experience, a common fall professional development course and spring “Engineering in History” course, and a common academic advisor. These students also have opportunities for: (1) faculty-student, student-student, and industry mentor-student interaction, (2) academic support and student success education, and (3) major and career exploration – all designed to help students develop feelings of institutional inclusion, engineering self-efficacy and identity, and academic and professional success skills. They also participate in the GRIT, Longitudinal Assessment of Engineering Self-Efficacy (LAESE), and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) surveys plus individual and focus group interviews at the start, midpoint, and end of each fall semester and at the end of the spring semester. The surveys provide a measure of students’ GRIT, their beliefs related to the intrinsic value of engineering and learning, their feelings of inclusion and test anxiety, and their self-efficacy related to engineering, math, and coping skills. The interviews provide information related to the student experience, feelings of inclusion, and program impact. Institutional data, combined with the survey and interview responses, are used to examine four research questions designed to examine the relationship of the elements of the AcES program to participants’ academic success and retention in engineering. Early analyses of the student retention data and survey responses from the 2017 and 2018 cohorts indicated students who ultimately left engineering before the start of their second year initially scored higher in areas of engineering self-efficacy and test anxiety, than those who stayed in engineering, while those who retained to the second year began their engineering education with lower self-efficacy scores, but higher scores related to the belief in the intrinsic value of engineering, learning strategy use, and coping self-efficacy. These results suggest that students who start with unrealistically high expectations of their performance leave engineering at higher rates than students who start with lower personal performance expectations, but have stronger value of the field and strategies for meeting challenges. These data appear to support the Kruger-Dunning effect in which students with limited knowledge of a specific field overestimate their abilities to perform in that area or underestimate the level of effort success may require. This paper will add an analysis of the academic success and retention data from 2019 cohort to this research, discuss the impact of COVID-19 to this program and research, as well as illuminate the quantitative results with the qualitative data from individual and focus group interviews regarding the aspects of the AcES program that impact student success, their expectations and methods for overcoming academic challenges, and their feelings of motivation and inclusion. 

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