Collaborative Research: Defining and Measuring Student Trust of Instructors in College STEM Courses

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by conducting basic research to characterize key components of student trust in college STEM instructors and how that trust contributes to desired student outcomes. The project is an EHR Core Research (ECR) Level 1 award, focused on STEM Learning and Learning Environments. A consensus is emerging about the benefits of student-centered pedagogies, like active learning, for students in college classrooms. However, less is known about how psychological and social factors in a classroom affect student outcomes. Furthermore, psychosocial factors may be particularly important in innovative teaching contexts where students are learning in new, unfamiliar ways. This project targets the multidimensional psychosocial variable of trust. Most existing educational studies on trust focus on primary/secondary school contexts and examine trust indirectly through student-teacher interactions or through the teacher or organization, instead of the student. The limited previous efforts in college environments have examined whether college students perceive their relationship with their instructor as a trusting one, as defined by understanding, acceptance, and care. Such efforts showed that trust predicted student buy-in to course material, course engagement, final course grade, and intent to persist in science. Interestingly, trust was more important in achieving these outcomes than other variables such as growth mindset. However, this previous definition of trust does not include other key dimensions of trust or the dynamics of trust-building. This project seeks to examine college students’ trust in their instructor by using a more comprehensive theoretical framework of trust. Utilizing this framework, trust building between students and instructors in college STEM courses will be facilitated, and the impact of trust on desired student outcomes will be assessed. It is anticipated that this work will advance research on student trust within the college STEM course environment, and examine how building trust positively impacts student engagement, learning, and persistence. This research unifies theories from the education and psychology research literatures to define trust more fully in an undergraduate STEM course context. It seeks to address two important research questions: 1) What are the key dimensions of student trust of an instructor in large college STEM classrooms? and 2) How does student trust in the instructor relate to important student outcome variables (e.g., student commitment, engagement, intent to persist in STEM, and final course grade), and are there differential impacts for students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields as compared to other groups of students? This project targets large enrollment college STEM courses, not only because these courses are where most STEM students in the nation are taught (majors and non-majors alike), but also because large enrollment courses such as these can make it particularly challenging to develop “one-to-many” (i.e., “instructor-to-students”) trust relationships. To broadly define and measure trust, this research will be conducted in courses operating as traditional lectures as well as those using new, evidence-based teaching practices. This project intends to use a mixed methods approach for instructor and student data collection. Specifically, it will proceed through a process of taxonomy development, instrument construction, and instrument validation to create and iteratively improve a measure of student trust for use in higher education contexts. The expected result is the initial establishment of a comprehensive yet parsimonious measure of college students’ trust in their instructor. This project has the potential to serve the STEM education community’s ongoing emphasis on finding ways to increase students’ commitment and engagement in student-centered classrooms and in STEM majors more broadly. The proposed project is a joint effort between researchers at Yale University and the University of Connecticut and is supported by the ECR program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. 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.