BEYOND THE DISCIPLINES IN DISCIPLINE-BASED EDUCATION RESEARCH (Invited Presentation)

According to the National Research Council report on Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER), DBER “investigates learning and teaching in a discipline from a perspective that reflects the discipline’s priorities, world view, knowledge, and practices.” Most of DBER has been grounded in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) with the practical goal of improving STEM student learning and development in higher education. Key goals for DBER are to understand how students learn concepts, practices, and ways of thinking in STEM, understand how individuals develop STEM expertise, identify and measure appropriate STEM learning objectives and instructional approaches that advance students toward those objectives, generate knowledge that guide the translation of DBER findings to STEM classroom practice, and identify approaches to make STEM education broad and inclusive. DBER is informed by and complementary to general research on teaching and learning and research in other social science disciplines, such as cognitive science and education psychology.

Individual STEM DBER disciplines (e.g., geosciences education research, biology education research) developed independently and have largely remained separate, with separate conferences, journals, and research interests. This talk will highlight several recent initiatives that are working across DBER disciplines to support areas of research that would benefit from cross-cutting DBER work. Foci of these initiatives include how to define, measure, and advance research on STEM practices, how to broaden participation and understand and promote inclusion in STEM, and how to understand and promote teaching and institutional change. Ideas will be shared regarding strategies and structures for supporting cross-DBER work and for helping disciplinary colleagues evaluate the impact of DBER scholarship.