Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are growing fields in both global job markets and educational spaces. The problem related to this study was the lack of understanding of how gender and ethnicity might relate to differences in the science self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and task interest of students who have participated in STEM intervention programs at the middle school level. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the extent to which there were differences between the dependent variables of science self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and task interest in U.S. middle school students based on the independent variables of gender and ethnicity after participating in a citizen science STEM intervention program. Social cognitive career theory was the theoretical framework for the study. This study was a nonexperimental comparative investigation based on survey responses from students who had participated in a water quality, citizen science STEM intervention from 2017-2019. The participating students’ school district has a history of multiple, systemic STEM learning experiences. The results of two-way MANOVA indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in career choice variables between male and female students and between non-Hispanic and Hispanic students after participating in a citizen science intervention program. This study has the potential to help students from underrepresented populations to envision success in their STEM educational and career pathways by seeing other students experience success in those areas. Educators may also be better able to design programs that address the specific needs of underrepresented student populations, which may lead to better student outcomes for those groups.

With a national push toward improving STEM education, it is imperative for researchers to study what makes students want to pursue STEM education and STEM careers. To learn about this in the context of one high school’s engineering program, this study used student interviews to gain insight into how student identities influence their interest and experiences in STEM. Five components of student identities were revealed to be influential on a student’s interest in STEM: (1) an early interest/skill in STEM, (2) familial involvement in STEM, (3) self-motivation, (4) gender, and (5) socioeconomic status.Race/ethnicity, peer influence, and teacher influence did not seem to be as influential as anticipated for the participants in this study. The implications from this study can be used to inform STEM education instruction, specifically within engineering programs, in an effort to intentionally improve student experiences with and interest in STEM.

There has been a call from the national community of biologists and biology educators to increase biological literacy of undergraduate students, including understanding and application of core concepts. The structure and function relationship is a core concept identified by the wider biology community and by physiology faculty. Understanding of the core concept structure and function across multiple levels of organization may promote biological literacy. My research focused on the development of formative written assessment tools to provide insight into student understanding of structure and function in anatomy and physiology. In chapter two I developed automated scoring tools to facilitate the evaluation of written formative assessment based on structure and function. Formative written assessments allow students to demonstrate their thinking by encouraging students to use their diverse ideas to construct their responses. However, formative written assessments are not often used in the undergraduate biology classroom due to barriers, such as time spent grading and the intricacy of interpreting student responses. Automated scoring, such as lexical analysis and machine scoring, can examine student thinking in formative written responses. The core concept structure-function provides a foundation upon which many topics in anatomy and physiology can be built across all levels of organization. My research focused on the development of formative written assessment tools and automated scoring models to provide insight into student understanding of structure and function. My research objective was to examine student understanding of a core concept in anatomy and physiology by using automated scoring. Ten short answer questions were administered to students in a junior-level General Physiology course and a sophomore level Human Anatomy and Physiology course at a large Southeastern public university, and to students in Human Anatomy and Physiology courses at two Southeastern two-year colleges. Seventeen students were interviewed to determine if their responses to the short answer questions accurately reflected their thinking. Lexical analysis and machine scoring were used to build predictive models that can analyze student thinking about the structure-function relationship in anatomy and physiology with high agreement to human scoring. Less than half of the student responses in this study demonstrated conceptual understanding of the structure-function relationship. Automated scoring can successfully evaluate a large number of student responses in Human Anatomy and Physiology and General Physiology courses. In chapter three I compared conceptual understanding of structure and function in 2-yr and 4-yr student responses. Anatomy and physiology is taught at a variety of institutions, including 2-year community colleges and 4-year research universities. Regardless of the type of institution offering anatomy and physiology, conceptual understanding of the structure-function relationship is necessary to understand physiological processes. The focus of my research was to compare conceptual understanding of 2-year versus 4-year anatomy and physiology students by using written formative assessment. I hypothesize that differences in students’ academic readiness between two-year and four-year institutions may affect conceptual understanding and student performance. Based on prior research, I predict that there will be a difference in conceptual understanding of the core concept structure and function between two-year and four-year students in anatomy and physiology, and that the students at the two-year institution will not perform as well as the students at the four-year institution, as measured by performance on the constructed response questions. Responses to eight short answer essay questions were collected from students at both types of institutions from students in human anatomy and physiology over six semesters. My results demonstrated that there is a difference in conceptual understanding of the structure-function relationship between 2-year and 4-year students in anatomy and physiology with more 4-year students mentioning SRF concepts in their responses compared to the 2-year students. A potential reason for this difference may be college readiness. There was no difference in performance between institution types on structure-function concepts examined in the A&P II course. My results suggested that students may benefit from a focus on core concepts within the content of anatomy and physiology courses. This focus should occur in both the first and second semesters of anatomy and physiology. Instructors can use written formative assessment to allow students to demonstrate their conceptual understanding within the organ systems. In chapter four I investigated how question features affect student responses to anatomy and physiology formative assessment questions. Short answer essay questions contain features which are elements of the question which aid students in connecting the question to their existing knowledge. Varying the features of a question may be used to provide insight into the different stages of students’ emerging biological expertise and differentiate novice students who have memorized an explanation from those who exhibit understanding. I am interested in examining the cognitive level of questions, the use of guiding context/references in question prompts, and the order of questions, and how these features elicit student explanations of the core concept structure-function in anatomy and physiology. I hypothesized that varying the features of short answer questions may affect student explanations. Short answer questions based on the core concept ‘structure-function’ were administered to 767 students in a junior level General Physiology course and to 573 students in a sophomore level Human Anatomy and Physiology course at a large southeastern public university. Student responses were first human scored and then scored by using lexical analysis and machine scoring. Students were interviewed to examine their familiarity with levels of organization and to confirm their interpretation of the questions. Students demonstrated more conceptual understanding of four of the structure-function concepts when answering the understand questions and more conceptual understanding of two structure-function concepts when answering the apply questions. The question prompts provided a different context which may have influenced student explanations. There was no difference in conceptual understanding of the structure-function relationship with and without the use of a guiding context in the wording of the question prompt. For question sequence, students performed better on the last questions in the sequence, regardless of whether the last question was easier or more difficult. Instructors should provide students with questions in varying contexts and cognitive levels will allow students to demonstrate their heterogeneous ideas about a concept.

The purpose of this dissertation research was to explore how engagement in action research influenced high school science teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices related to student voice and participation. This included exploring any affordances or obstacles they experienced with attempting to increase student voice and participation in their classrooms. I facilitated individual action research projects with the teachers, and they were able to discuss individual action research plans and share ideas with colleagues. Four high school science teachers began this research. While all four teachers were selected as cases, only two of the teachers designed and followed through with their action research plans. The teachers were provided with a hierarchy of student participation and examples of each of the four levels of the hierarchy in order to guide and design their action research. Collected data included transcripts from the action research group meetings, classroom observations, teacher journals, and interviews with teachers. A combination of direct interpretation and thematic coding was used to analyze the data. Direct interpretation involved writing narratives based on what I saw and interpreting events as I experienced them. The teachers either maintained their positive beliefs or formed new beliefs related to the inclusion of student voice. In addition, both teachers successfully used action research as a way to overcome obstacles and increase student voice and participation in their classrooms. This study has implications for teachers who want to use action research to better understand their teaching related to student voice, administrators and teacher educators who want to provide PD opportunities and support to meet individual teacher needs, and researchers who are interested in studying student voice.

This project used narrative inquiry to examine adolescent experiences that contributed to the development of positive mathematics identities in successful African Americans. Ten African Americans, who had worked in a STEM-related occupation for at least two years, were asked to reflect on in- and out-of-school experiences with mathematics during their middle and high school years. Data collection included individual interviews and one focus group discussion. A combination of internal and external factors emerged as contributors to participants’ adolescent mathematics identities. Internal factors included early career interest, finding enjoyment in the challenges associated with learning mathematics, or facing setbacks they were determined to overcome. External influences included parents/family members, teachers/school staff, and peers who were influential agents in participants’ mathematics socialization. Participants’ stories revealed that mathematics identities were developed in several communities of practice—the mathematics classroom, after-school (or school-affiliated) programs, summer programs, and during unstructured free time. The findings offer three possible applications to practice: 1) Continue developing school-based and out-of-school programs aimed at exposing African American adolescents to STEM and allowing them to apply the knowledge gained in the classrooms in the real world; 2) Increase efforts to educate African American parents about the variety of occupations related to STEM and the foundational knowledge needed to gain access to these occupations; and 3) Continue efforts to recruit African American secondary teachers for STEM-related courses.

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