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Funded by the National Science Foundation, the S-STEM project, STEM CONNECT (Award No. 1930211) involves a partnership among three institutions (including one bachelor’s degree-awarding and two associate’s degree-awarding institutions) aimed at supporting cohorts of low-income, high achieving students (“Scholars”) to succeed in obtaining a STEM degree that emphasizes computer science and mathematics. The project is particularly interested in supporting women, underrepresented minorities, first generation students, transfer students, and rural students. The project uses a variety of mechanisms to support Scholars, including providing academic support through tutoring, connecting Scholars with faculty and peer mentors, developing community-building activities (e.g., Puzzle Hunts, documentary viewings), and providing career development activities (e.g., tours of local engineering and technology businesses). In this poster session, we present an analysis of data on students’ academic progress (e.g., grades, graduation rates) and STEM work experiences (e.g., internships, research opportunities) as well as a qualitative analysis of student interview data to describe to what extent and how project structures and activities have helped Scholars to persist in their selected STEM majors and STEM career pathways. Specifically, we conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of data from student focus groups held over a period of three years (three in Spring 2021, nine in Spring 2022, and eight in Spring 2023), during which Scholars were asked to reflect on and evaluate components of the project, as well as interviews with five women Scholars about their experiences. We used theories of capital (e.g., social capital theory, Yosso’s cultural wealth model) to aid in the development of themes. Overall, Scholars valued the extent to which the project invested in their educational and professional success. Major themes highlight the importance of mentors, positioning Scholars as STEM professionals, and academic support structures in increasing Scholars’ sense of belonging and desire to persist in STEM. Mentors were shown to play a critical role in a.) supporting times of transition (e.g., transitioning from applied to proof-based courses, transitioning from small class sizes at a community college to large enrollment courses at a bachelor’s degree-awarding institution) b.) helping Scholars get “a foot in the door” to obtain relevant work experiences and c.) assisting students in navigating academic structures perceived as barriers to their academic pathway. Scholars also valued project opportunities that allowed students to envision themselves as professionals (e.g., through speakers who talked about their professional journey, by interacting with “like-minded peers” that have similar “goals and drives”) and that positioned Scholars as professionals (e.g., by inviting Scholars to serve as panelists at local events, by giving students funding to attend a STEM conference). Further, Scholars appreciated the project’s efforts to enroll scholars in the same sections of courses, as Scholars saw the value in being able to collaborate with peers that they know. Finally, an overarching theme from these data was that project structures and activities were often successful because they built upon the assets (e.g., aspirations) that Scholars brought with them to college. 

Learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects starting at a young age helps prepare students for a variety of careers both inside and outside of the sciences. Yet, addressing integrated STEM in an elementary school setting can be challenging. Teacher leadership is one way to address this challenge. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive case study is to understand how participation in the NebraskaSTEM Noyce Master Teaching Fellowship project impacted elementary STEM teacher leadership identities. Our findings suggest participation in the project contributed to different layers of teacher leadership identity (as a STEM learner, as a STEM teacher, and as a STEM teacher leader). These findings suggest professional development should be tailored to address empowering specific layers of STEM teacher leaders' professional identity. Other teacher leadership development projects may want to consider how to structure their projects to empower teachers based on the identities and experiences of those teachers.

 

Several studies have shown that the use of active learning strategies can help improve student success and persistence in STEM-related fields. Despite this, widespread adoption of active learning strategies is not yet a reality as institutional change can be difficult to enact. Accordingly, it is important to understand how departments in institutions of higher education can initiate and sustain meaningful change. We use interview data collected from two institutions to examine how leaders at two universities contributed to the initiation, implementation, and sustainability of active learning in undergraduate calculus and precalculus courses. At each institution, we spoke to 27 stakeholders involved in changes (including administrators, department chairs, course coordinators, instructors, and students). Our results show that the success of these changes rested on the ability of leaders to stimulate significant cultural shifts within the mathematics department. We use communities of transformation theory and the four-frame model of organization change in STEM departments in order to better understand how leaders enabled such cultural shifts. Our study highlights actions leaders may take to support efforts at improving education by normalizing the use of active learning strategies and provides potential reasons for the efficacy of such actions. These results underscore the importance of establishing flexible, distributed leadership models that attend to the cultural and operational norms of a department. Such results may inform leaders at other institutions looking to improve education in their STEM departments.

 

Several academic departments have increased their use of active learning to address low student success rates. However, it is unclear whether those implementing active learning have a consistent conceptualization of it. Like other educational terms, the phrase “active learning” is in danger of becoming overused and misunderstood, which puts the utility of active learning into question. This study examines 115 conceptualizations of active learning across six institutions of higher education that are infusing more active learning into their mathematics courses. We use the four pillars of inquiry-based mathematics education as a basis for analyzing these conceptualizations and compare them in two ways: by stakeholder role and by institution. Our findings show that many participants conceptualize active learning as student engagement and activities other than lecture, yet there was limited focus on the role of the teacher and content. Only eight participants mentioned issues of equity. Comparison within individual institutions shows that faculty within departments may hold common understandings of active learning. Implications of these findings include a need to develop an understanding of active learning that attends to all four pillars and is shared across departments, institutions, and disciplines.