There is a national interest in improving the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in institutions of higher education in the face of mounting difficulties. Reports by the National Academy of Sciences in 2018 and 2020 found that the dissemination and adoption of effective, timely change initiatives...
Research has confirmed a lack of diversity and persistence of underrepresented populations in the STEM fields. Recruiting and retaining more women and people of color into STEM fields has long been a goal of higher education, per a notable lack of women and people of color who enter and complete...
The underlying aim of my dissertation was to contribute knowledge that may better support and foster STEM education improvement initiatives at public research universities. The two research studies included in my dissertation advance knowledge per perspectives of key stakeholders targeted by initiatives attempting to foster change, students and faculty. In...
There is a national interest in improving the quality of STEM education in institutions of higher education. One goal of multiple initiatives focusing on such improvement is empowering more STEM educators to implement evidence-based instructional practices, that research has shown best help students learn. Related strategies target change in STEM...
In response to concern over a lack of diversity in STEM postsecondary programs, institutions of higher education across the nation have promoted opportunities for undergraduate research. Such opportunities have been shown to enrich student experiences and success, especially for students from historically underrepresented groups. While these benefits have been fairly...
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) recommend that science courses engage communities of students in scientific practices that include building accurate conceptual models of phenomena central to the understanding of scientific disciplines. We offer a set of activities, implemented successfully at both the secondary and postsecondary levels,...
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are a recent set of standards that leverage decades of research to present an innovative and coherent image for K 12 science education in the United States. Major themes in the NGSS include the intertwining of learning and doing science, addressing connections across scientific...
The numerous initiatives targeting postsecondary science education improvement are diverse. Yet a key strategy of many initiatives are new organizational routines, that can regularly bring faculty together to learn new teaching-related knowledge, skills, and commitments. Regardless of some evidence of the success of these initiatives, more theory-informed empirical investigations are...
There is growing recognition of the importance of engaging postsecondary students in experiences that can heighten their ability to solve complex socio-scientific problems. Transdisciplinary experiences are required to integrate and synthesize knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking across typical disciplinary boundaries reflected in higher education institutions. Creating transdisciplinary student experiences,...
There has been a rapid increase in technological advances in the biological sciences that has contributed to an increase in societal issues that require attention from both scientists and citizens. Consequently, there is a need for the development of biologically literate citizens who have the ability to use their knowledge...
Agriculture teachers, in comparison to other high school teachers, work in more varied and demanding work environments (Terry & Briers, 2010; Torres, Ulmer, & Aschenbrener, 2008). The body of literature studying the impacts of more varied and demanding work environment on early career agriculture teachers (ECATs) is commonly limited to...
The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of secondary agriculture teachers as they reconcile the competing demands of the profession in the social landscape of School-Based Agricultural Education. Previous literature about the agriculture teacher shortage problem revealed opportunities for research to utilize qualitative approaches and alternative...
We call for the promotion of faculty innovation & entrepreneurship (I&E), across disciplines, and its recognition in promotion and tenure processes– thereby enabling universities to better serve as a talent and idea engine for the Nation’s innovation economy, and evolve and respond in a time of enhanced societal needs and...
This paper explores the affordances and constraints of STEM faculty members' instructional data-use practices and how they engage students (or not) in reflection around their own learning data. We found faculty used a wide variety of instructional data-use practices. We also found several constraints that influenced their instructional data-use practices,...
Generalisation is a key component of mathematical activity. Mathematicians often seek general formulae or wonder if a rule that holds in a particular dimension also holds in dimension n. However, generalisation is not limited to professional mathematicians; kindergarteners engage in generalisation when they seek patterns and algebra is sometimes described...
The purpose of this study was to describe and explore the relationships between work and family domain characteristics, time-based work-family conflict (WFC), and turnover intention of agriculture teachers. This study sought to identify factors influencing agriculture teachers' turnover intentions. An additional focus of this study was to explore differences between...
Multiple factors are known to influence student success in higher education. Barriers to postsecondary success for underrepresented STEM students are numerous and well documented. We detail an exploratory study of STEM faculty notions of successful students and the instructional practices they employ to cultivate student success. We use a conceptual...
An oft-cited strategy for fostering instructional improvements to STEM education is creating faculty communities, where instructors can share and learn best teaching practices. Despite research-documented benefits, relatively little is known about why (and with whom) faculty engage in teaching-related conversations, including those fostered by initiatives. We explored how STEM faculty...
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The purpose of this paper is to offer a systematic review of empirical literature examining doctoral students’ identity development as scholars in the education sciences. We frame our analysis through a constructivist sociocultural perspective to organize our findings and discuss implications for multiple actors and components that constitute the...