A Framework of College Student Buy-in to Evidence-Based Teaching Practices in STEM: The Roles of Trust and Growth Mindset

Cong Wang; Andrew J. Cavanagh; Melanie Bauer; Philip M. Reeves; Julia C. Gill; Xinnian Chen; I Hanauer David; Mark J. Graham; Tessa C. Andrews

doi:10.1187/cbe.20-08-0185

A Framework of College Student Buy-in to Evidence-Based Teaching Practices in STEM: The Roles of Trust and Growth Mindset

Cong Wang
, Andrew J. Cavanagh
, Melanie Bauer
, Philip M. Reeves
, Julia C. Gill
, Xinnian Chen
, I Hanauer David
, Mark J. Graham
, Tessa C. Andrews

Nova Southeastern University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

Evidence-based teaching practices (EBPs) foster college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students’ engagement and performance, yet our knowledge of what contributes to the effectiveness of these practices is less established. We propose a framework that links four social-cognitive variables—students’ trust in their instructors, growth mindset, buy-in to instructional practices, and course engagement—to long-standing desired student outcomes of academic performance and intent to persist in science. This framework was tested in classrooms identified as having a high level of EBP implementation with a multi-institutional sample of 2102 undergraduates taught by 14 faculty members. Results indicate that the buy-in framework is a valid representation of college students’ learning experiences within EBP contexts overall as well as across underrepresented student groups. In comparison to students’ level of growth mindset, students’ trust in their instructors was more than twice as predictive of buy-in to how the course was being taught, suggesting that students’ views of their instructors are more associated with thriving in a high-EBP course environment than their views of intelligence. This study contributes to the dialogue on transforming undergraduate STEM education by providing a validated student buy-in framework as a lens to understand how EBPs enhance student outcomes.

Original language	English
Article number	ar54
Number of pages	10
Journal	CBE-Life Sciences Education
Volume	20
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-08-0185
State	Published - Dec 1 2021

Bibliographical note

© 2021 C. Wang et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2021 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

Funding

This work was supported through a National Science Foundation Transforming Undergraduate Research in the Sciences (TUES) grant (NSF no. 1323258). We thank our collaborators on this grant, including Jane Cameron Buckley, Brian Couch, Mary Durham, Jennifer Frederick, Monica Hargraves, Claire Hebbard, Jennifer Knight, and William Trochim. Support for the Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching was made possible through funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute originally awarded to Jo Handelsman.

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10.1187/cbe.20-08-0185License: CC BY-NC-SA

Cite this

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A Framework of College Student Buy-in to Evidence-Based Teaching Practices in STEM: The Roles of Trust and Growth Mindset

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