Collaborative Research: Defining and Measuring Student Trust of Instructors in College STEM Courses

合作研究：定义和衡量学生对大学 STEM 课程教师的信任

• 批准号: 2000417
• 负责人: Mark Graham
• 金额: $ 38.13万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-10-01 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2000417&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Defining; Measuring; Student

This project aims to serve the national interest by conducting basic research to characterize key components of student trust in college STEM instructors and how that trust contributes to desired student outcomes. The project is an EHR Core Research (ECR) Level 1 award, focused on STEM Learning and Learning Environments. A consensus is emerging about the benefits of student-centered pedagogies, like active learning, for students in college classrooms. However, less is known about how psychological and social factors in a classroom affect student outcomes. Furthermore, psychosocial factors may be particularly important in innovative teaching contexts where students are learning in new, unfamiliar ways. This project targets the multidimensional psychosocial variable of trust. Most existing educational studies on trust focus on primary/secondary school contexts and examine trust indirectly through student-teacher interactions or through the teacher or organization, instead of the student. The limited previous efforts in college environments have examined whether college students perceive their relationship with their instructor as a trusting one, as defined by understanding, acceptance, and care. Such efforts showed that trust predicted student buy-in to course material, course engagement, final course grade, and intent to persist in science. Interestingly, trust was more important in achieving these outcomes than other variables such as growth mindset. However, this previous definition of trust does not include other key dimensions of trust or the dynamics of trust-building. This project seeks to examine college students’ trust in their instructor by using a more comprehensive theoretical framework of trust. Utilizing this framework, trust building between students and instructors in college STEM courses will be facilitated, and the impact of trust on desired student outcomes will be assessed. It is anticipated that this work will advance research on student trust within the college STEM course environment, and examine how building trust positively impacts student engagement, learning, and persistence.This research unifies theories from the education and psychology research literatures to define trust more fully in an undergraduate STEM course context. It seeks to address two important research questions: 1) What are the key dimensions of student trust of an instructor in large college STEM classrooms? and 2) How does student trust in the instructor relate to important student outcome variables (e.g., student commitment, engagement, intent to persist in STEM, and final course grade), and are there differential impacts for students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields as compared to other groups of students? This project targets large enrollment college STEM courses, not only because these courses are where most STEM students in the nation are taught (majors and non-majors alike), but also because large enrollment courses such as these can make it particularly challenging to develop “one-to-many” (i.e., “instructor-to-students”) trust relationships. To broadly define and measure trust, this research will be conducted in courses operating as traditional lectures as well as those using new, evidence-based teaching practices. This project intends to use a mixed methods approach for instructor and student data collection. Specifically, it will proceed through a process of taxonomy development, instrument construction, and instrument validation to create and iteratively improve a measure of student trust for use in higher education contexts. The expected result is the initial establishment of a comprehensive yet parsimonious measure of college students’ trust in their instructor. This project has the potential to serve the STEM education community’s ongoing emphasis on finding ways to increase students’ commitment and engagement in student-centered classrooms and in STEM majors more broadly. The proposed project is a joint effort between researchers at Yale University and the University of Connecticut and is supported by the ECR program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.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.

该项目旨在通过开展基础研究来描述学生对大学 STEM 教师信任的关键组成部分以及这种信任如何有助于学生取得预期成果，从而服务于国家利益。该项目是 EHR 核心研究 (ECR) 1 级奖项，重点关注 STEM。学习和学习环境。关于以学生为中心的教学法（例如主动学习）对大学课堂的好处正在形成共识。然而，人们对课堂中的心理和社会因素如何影响学生的成绩知之甚少。或许在学生以新的、不熟悉的方式学习的创新教学环境中尤其重要，该项目针对信任的多维心理社会变量。以前在大学环境中的有限努力已经检验了大学生是否认为他们与导师的关系是一种信任关系，这种关系的定义是理解、接受和关心。这种努力表明，信任预示着学生。购买课程材料、课程参与度、期末考试课程成绩和坚持科学的意愿，在实现这些成果方面，信任比成长心态等其他变量更重要。然而，先前的信任定义不包括信任的其他关键维度或建立信任的动力。该项目旨在通过使用更全面的信任理论框架来检验大学生对教师的信任，从而促进大学 STEM 课程中学生和教师之间的信任建立，以及信任对学生期望结果的影响。预计这项工作将推进研究。这项研究结合了教育和心理学研究文献中的理论，以在本科 STEM 课程环境中更全面地定义信任。解决两个重要的研究问题：1）在大型大学 STEM 课堂上，学生对教师的信任的关键维度是什么？2）学生对教师的信任与重要的学生成果变量（例如，学生的承诺、参与度、有意坚持STEM，和最终课程成绩），与其他学生群体相比，STEM 领域代表性不足的群体的学生是否会受到不同的影响？该项目针对的是大招生大学 STEM 课程，不仅因为这些课程是全国大多数 STEM 学生所在的课程教授（专业和非专业都一样），而且还因为诸如此类的大招生课程可能会使发展“一对多”（即“教师与学生”）的信任关系变得特别具有挑战性。和为了衡量信任，这项研究将在传统讲座以及使用新的基于证据的教学实践的课程中进行。具体来说，它将通过一种混合方法来收集教师和学生的数据。分类法开发、工具构建和工具验证的过程，以创建和迭代改进用于高等教育环境的学生信任度量。预期结果是初步建立一个全面而简洁的大学生对其教师信任的度量。该项目有潜力服务STEM 教育界一直强调寻找方法来提高学生对以学生为中心的课堂和更广泛的 STEM 专业的投入和参与度。拟议的项目是耶鲁大学和康涅狄格大学研究人员的共同努力，并得到了ECR 计划，支持推进 STEM 学习和学习环境的基础研究、扩大 STEM 的参与以及 STEM 劳动力发展的工作。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响进行评估，被认为值得支持审查标准。