Julian Noaker
Research Mentor(s): Demetri Morgan
Mentor Department: Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education
Authors: Julian Noaker, Demetri Morgan
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 57
Abstract
At what point does a student interested in STEM begin to see themselves as a “STEM studentâ€. In this study the research is interested in exploring how these “STEM students†identify themselves, and how they go about gaining this identity. This project is under both the ETHOS project at Loyola University Chicago and the Dana Foundation’s Neuroscience and Society initiative. We get our data from photo journals obtained through a summer neuroscience program called Ethos. This program gave high school students the opportunity to work in a lab setting as they learned about neuroscience. Throughout the course they were asked to provide an image and excerpt each day. These images and excerpts are now what we are analyzing in order to look for any patterns as to how these students associate with STEM. In order to process this data, we use a program called NVivo in order to organize our data and compare it with our fellow research assistants. Our working research question is: What can a participant generated photojournal reveal about a student’s STEM Identity / STEM Literacy? Our findings will reveal insights about the process of a student’s STEM identity development and have implications for STEM education and training.
