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To remedy the disparity between sexes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, it is important to understand the factors critical to initiating and maintaining STEM interest. To this end, we created and administered a survey to almost 8,000 individuals in and outside of STEM fields. Our results shed light on the various factors that are critical for sparking STEM interest and persisting in STEM fields for each sex as well as the differences in movement in and out of STEM pathways for each. These results reveal that although there is no singular pathway into STEM fields, self-driven interest is a large factor in persistence, especially for males, and females rely more heavily on support from others.

Purpose: This study aims to understand how graduate students in a maker education course discuss beliefs about making and implement these beliefs as pedagogy in their curricular designs. Design/methodology/approach: Interview transcripts from seven students were analyzed thematically for conceptions of making and learning. Lesson plans were also coded for elements of making, and the authors compared students' articulated ideas about making with the practical implementation of making in their designs. Findings: Students reflected on the nature of making and the possible benefits and tensions surrounding the use of making for learning. Multiple students discussed benefits for their future learning and careers. Comparisons between interview and lesson plans highlight both successful alignments and key gaps in the application of making principles, including struggles that students encountered when translating their beliefs about making into real-world pedagogy. Research limitations/implications: Given the limited sample size, future research should explore the extent to which educators in other contexts encounter similar or different obstacles in their development of maker-focused pedagogies. Practical implications: Findings can be used to inform future maker education courses to better support students in successfully translating core principles of making from general beliefs into effective and practical pedagogical strategies. Originality/value: Despite widespread interest in combining making with educational spaces, much remains to be understood about the strategies that educators use to integrate elements of making into their pedagogy. This study contributes discussions of the benefits and tensions that maker educators may encounter when blending tenets of making with the needs of formal education.

Undergraduate research experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are championed for promoting students' personal and professional development. Mentorship is an integral part of undergraduate research, as effective mentorship maximizes the benefits undergraduates realize from participating in research. Yet almost no research examines instances in which mentoring is less effective or even problematic, even though prior research on mentoring in workplace settings suggests negative mentoring experiences are common. Here, we report the results of a qualitative study to define and characterize negative mentoring experiences of undergraduate life science researchers. Undergraduate researchers in our study reported seven major ways they experienced negative mentoring: absenteeism, abuse of power, interpersonal mismatch, lack of career support, lack of psychosocial support, misaligned expectations, and unequal treatment. They described some of these experiences as the result of absence of positive mentoring behavior and others as actively harmful behavior, both of which they perceive as detrimental to their psychosocial and career development. Our results are useful to mentors for reflecting on ways their behaviors might be perceived as harmful or unhelpful. These findings can also serve as a foundation for future research aimed at examining the prevalence and impact of negative mentoring experiences in undergraduate research.

Given the centrality of data visualizations in communicating scientific information, increased emphasis has been placed on the development of students' graph literacy--the ability to generate and interpret data representations--to foster understanding of domain-specific knowledge and the successful navigation of everyday life. Despite prior literature that identifies student difficulties and methods to improve graphing competencies, there is little understanding as to how learners develop these skills. To gain a better resolution of the cognitive basis by which individuals "see" graphs, this study uses eye tracking (ET) to compare the strategies of non-science undergraduates (n = 9), early (n = 7) and advanced (n = 8) biology undergraduates, graduate students (n = 6), and science faculty (n = 6) in making sense of data displays. Results highlight variation in how individuals direct their attention (i.e., fixations and visual search patterns) when completing graph-based tasks as a function of science expertise. As research on the transition from novice to expert is crucially important in understanding how we might design curricula that help novices move toward more expert-like performance, this study has implications for the advancement of new strategies to aid the teaching and learning of data analysis skills.

The focus of this research was to investigate how students learn to do fieldwork through observation. This study addressed the following questions: (1) Can mobile eye-tracking devices provide a robust source of data to investigate the observations and workflow of novice students while participating in a field exercise? If so, what are the strengths and limitations of mobile eye tracking? (2) If these devices offer a unique source of data to investigate student work, what findings might be helpful for improving field instruction? To address these questions, we used mobile eye-tracking devices in a pilot study to collect video from students completing mapping exercises during a geology field course. Data were collected from six students participating in two different parts of an exercise where they were asked to create geological maps of an area based on their field observations. From this study, we learned that conducting eye-tracking research in field conditions is technically demanding and operationally difficult. We found that most of our analysis was based on reviewing the scene video and did not require the eye-tracking information. In reviewing the scene videos, substantive features of students' observational practices were exposed. We found that students struggle with foundational mapping practices, miss opportunities to collect key data, and are often distracted or disengaged during direct instruction. We observed instances of swarm behavior where students tend to group around outcrops even when nominally working independently. We also noted key differences in student behavior working individually compared with group mapping. We believe these findings provide data for geoscience educators to consider when thinking about ways in which to develop the observational skills of their students and to design appropriate field course instruction.

Misconceptions are the "the old, the bad, and the ugly" prior knowledge, ideas or conceptions that the learners have that hinder their further learning in science. Several types of misconceptions that undergraduate students hold about reaction coordinate diagrams (from here on we use the term "reaction coordinate diagrams" and "energy diagrams" interchangeably) are described herein. The rationale of 223 students were coded based on their responses to a multiple-choice question on the topic, and interviews (n = 10) were used to delve deeper into the students' knowledge structures. The results of the open coding of the rationale and the interviews were used in developing an instrument which was administered to 57 students. In this paper, we present the assessment instrument and the alternate conceptions that students have regarding energy diagrams that have not been reported in the literature yet. Implications for instructional approaches particular to the energy diagram topic are discussed.

Using a national survey of more than 7,000 students from 128 different college introductory science courses, the authors compared students who experienced Block scheduling and Traditional scheduling in high school. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

National calls in science, technology, engineering, and technology education reform efforts have advanced the wide-scale engagement of students in undergraduate research for the preparation of a workforce and citizenry able to attend to the challenges of the 21st century. Awareness of the potential benefits and costs of these experiences has led to an emerging literature base outlining gains in participants' cognitive, affective, and conative domains to support the impact of undergraduate research for students of all backgrounds; however, the majority of this work has relied on self-report data limiting inferences to the causal effects on student learning. As part of a larger project on apprentice-like undergraduate research experiences (UREs) in the physical sciences, the present exploratory study complemented indirect self-report data with direct performance data to assess the development of chemistry students' scientific thinking skills over a research experience. Performance data were collected using the Performance assessment of Undergraduate Research Experiences (PURE) instrument, a validated tool designed to assess changes in chemistry students' analytical and data driven decision-making skills through open-response tasks situated in real-world problems from primary literature. Twenty-four summer research students in chemistry (46% women; 50% 1st/2nd year students; 42% first time URE participant) from seven colleges and universities provided baseline and post-intervention performance data. Differences in pre/post-response task correctness provided a direct measure of individual changes in student competencies. Early study findings indicate the positive contributions of UREs to student's competencies in the areas of problem-solving, experimental design and the use of research techniques, data analysis and the interpretation of results, and the evaluation of primary literature. Survey data were also collected on students' self-skill ratings to allow comparisons between perceived and demonstrated competencies, which were found to be weakly correlated. This work begins to offer direct evidence to the effect of UREs on student learning progressions as well as the potential use of performance test data in evaluating the success of research training interventions designed to improve scientific thinking skills.

Engaging students in class is paramount if they are to gain a deep understanding of class content. Student engagement is manifested by attention to the various components of instruction. However, there is little research at the tertiary level focusing on what aspects of instruction are related to changes in student attention during class. To address this gap, we collected multiple streams of data that provide a measure of student attention during instruction. We had students in an organic chemistry course who wear hats with a camera mounted on the brim, to provide a record of student gaze (i.e. looking at the board, notes, and friends). We also had students who use electronic pens that allowed us to record what information students transferred into their notes (pencasts). Based on our initial results, we believe the data provided by the point-of-view cameras and electronic pens hold great promise for using these technologies as viable research tools in educational settings to address various research questions.

Understanding how geologists conduct fieldwork through analysis of problem solving has significant potential impact on field instruction methods within geology and other science fields. Recent work has highlighted many aspects of fieldwork, but the problem solving behaviors displayed by geologists during fieldwork and the associated cognitive processes remain poorly understood. We present research showing how geology students initiate and develop geologic models as part of the problem solving process. We qualitatively analyzed field notes and interview data from 36 undergraduate geoscientists engaged in field exams during a 6-week advanced field camp. Eight cognitive approaches grouped in two broad categories emerged from the data that show how students develop geologic models. Students employ both single and multiple model approaches with varying degrees of success and frequency. The success of any given approach appears to be dependent on the level of students' geologic situation awareness. The development of multiple geologic models leads to a higher rate of success in general, because of the inherent flexibility to accommodate newly collected data. Instructors should continue to teach a multiple model approach until students have the proper geologic skills to ensure a high level of situation awareness and exhibit expert characteristics in the field. Furthermore, students should be instructed to eliminate weaker models as they progress throughout each mapping assignment.

Previous research has established the importance of early interest in STEM as a key factor in persistence. Our current research builds on this foundation and extends it to add more detail to understanding the types of experiences that trigger and maintain interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Using survey data from nearly 8,000 individuals, we are able to address the "When?," "What?," and "Who?" of those first experiences. Additionally, our data provide information on the types of experiences that maintained interest (or not) beyond the triggering event. Through purposeful sampling, our data include those who ended up in STEM fields and those who did not, which allows us to make important comparisons across these groups. Overall, our findings indicate that individuals who complete STEM degrees have quite varied histories and that the triggering of their interest happened across a wide age spectrum. Similarly, in terms of who was involved or what their triggering experience was, the general results support the notion that there are many pathways to STEM with no clear preferential pathway.

The loss of talented women from the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pipeline has been widely recognized within science education as a pressing issue, particularly in the physical sciences. To provide a gender-based perspective of a popular educational device, the present study evaluated undergraduate research experiences (UREs) from a longitudinal perspective in respect to participation, learning enhancements, and contribution to the pursuit of a postgraduate education. Data from practicing scientists and graduate students indicated that women were more likely to participate in these research programs than their male counterparts. Of those who had participated (n = 1829), similar patterns in conferred gains for men and women were reported; however, gender-based variations were observed within items associated with self-efficacy, science interest, and the practice of authentic research. Women were found to identify UREs as a primary reason for entering graduate school at a significantly higher rate than their male counterparts. Results of this study suggest the long-term efficacy of UREs as a gateway for women interested in STEM careers and provide support in justifying research programs and initiatives for women in traditionally male-dominated fields. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been endorsed as a powerful instructional tool in higher education; however, relatively little is known about the long-term effects of participation in these programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the educational enhancements of URE participation from the perspective of practicing scientists in chemistry and physics. Data used in this analysis are from a national mixed-methods study, which sought to investigate the transition from graduate student to practicing scientist. Respondents (n = 4,300) provided extensive data regarding their demographic and educational backgrounds, motivations, research, and professional experiences. Initial findings indicate UREs afford students a multitude of long-term enhancements, with the largest being exposure to genuine research, building of confidence to conduct research, and development of laboratory techniques. Although research type was found to have a limited effect on reported outcomes, the findings of this study support the value of UREs structured in collaborative student-mentor models that are based on the individual. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Laboratory experiences play a substantial role in most high school science courses, and many teachers believe the number of labs they offer is a measure of the quality of their curriculum. While some teachers believe labs are meant to confirm concepts taught during lectures, others feel labs should address students' everyday beliefs about the world. Still other teachers emphasize learning of the scientific method and laboratory techniques. Accordingly, many articles offer advice on "effective" pedagogical practices.