Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Emergent Themes in Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Professional Development
Abstract
Herein I present a comprehensive view of mentoring and professional development programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate education. In CHAPTER 1 I describe a brief outline of this dissertation. In CHAPTER 2 I present a meta-analysis and systematic review of undergraduate mentor programs, where I find an overall lack of consensus and high-quality research design among the literature, limiting the application of meta-analysis interpretation. In response, I developed and validated a tool, the STEM Mentoring Rubric (STEMMR), to align the research community with best practices in STEM undergraduate mentoring programs. I used multiple raters to validate the STEMMR, rooting its salient factors in the STEM mentoring literature. Next, I describe a series of quantitative and qualitative research studies I conducted on various learning groups in STEM education, including pre-service STEM teachers in CHAPTER 3, STEM undergraduates in an introductory chemistry course in CHAPTER 4, and STEM faculty teaching undergraduate food, energy, and water nexus courses in CHAPTER 5. CHAPTER 6 outlines a brief conclusion of this dissertation. Overall, I found that the emergent themes and results from these studies supported the findings from my meta-analysis and systematic review of STEM mentoring programs in CHAPTER 1 and contributed to the field of undergraduate STEM education.
Subject Area
Teacher education|Higher education|Science education
Recommended Citation
Sommers, Amie S, "Emergent Themes in Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Professional Development" (2021). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI28418654.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI28418654