A principal goal of U.S. graduate education is to prepare independent researchers by focusing students on learning content and conducting research, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Students have primarily been prepared for academic career paths although a significant proportion of STEM graduate students go on to non-academic careers. Therefore, it is vital to focus graduate education efforts on preparing a new type of scholar - one with a strong professional identity and a flexible set of tools - rather than preparing a person for a specific type of career. Although often neglected in traditional graduate education, the development of a student's professional identity is proven to raise retention rates and promote academic success, particularly for underrepresented students. This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to Boise State University will test an educational model that supports the cultivation of STEM graduate students' professional identities through collaboration with undergraduate education majors and elementary students in STEM learning. The teaching and communication skills that graduate students develop through the project will be transferable to diverse career paths.
GIFT (Graduate Identity Formation through Teaching) focuses on the promotion of graduate student professional identity via the concept of disciplinary stewardship, wherein professionals learn not only the knowledge and skills of their discipline, but also how their discipline connects to and serves society as a whole. Through a one credit hour course, graduate students will develop a deeper understanding of pedagogy, as well as issues related to teaching and learning. The graduate students simultaneously serve as disciplinary experts as they teach elementary teacher candidates specific topics related to the Next Generation Science Standards. The teacher candidates subsequently turn this knowledge into 15-minute mini-lessons for elementary students at a local Title I school. Based on interdisciplinary collaborations with four STEM departments at Boise State, spread over six semesters, it is anticipated that this effort will provide a transferable, low/no-cost model for future interventions that support graduate students more broadly. A comprehensive, longitudinal research plan employing both quantitative and qualitative data will enable analysis of the intervention with respect to: graduate student professional identity development, including variability across student demographics/attributes; graduate faculty advisors' attitudes/outlooks on the purposes of graduate education; and the impact of the academic disciplinary context/setting on the design of the intervention, and hence its scalability and transferability. This work stands to contribute to the fields of graduate education, educational opportunities, and STEM education research.
The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.
This proposal is co-funded by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). EPSCoR co-funds projects that advance excellence in science and engineering research and education. Fostering sustainable increases in research, education, and training capacity and competitiveness within EPSCoR jurisdictions will enable EPSCoR participants to have increased engagement in areas supported by the NSF.
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.
