Rethinking STEM identity: GSE scholar explores how students see themselves in STEM

For years, Jennifer Tripp has listened to students say, “I’m just not a math person,” or “STEM isn’t for me”—even as they creatively engaged in STEM practices and habits of mind in their daily lives. Now, through her research, she’s working to change those narratives and create a broadened, more comprehensive vision of STEM identity.

Tripp, an educator and postdoctoral research associate at the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, and her team have been awarded a SUNY Research Seed Grant for their project, “Development and Validation of a STEM Identity Inventory for Grades 4-12 Students.” This grant provides $40,000 to pilot critical research aimed at redefining and measuring STEM identity among students.

Tripp and her team consider STEM identity—how students see themselves in relation to science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine—to be a key aim and outcome of Pre-K-12 STEM education. It plays a significant role in shaping students’ lifelong STEM learning and engagement trajectories.

However, current tools for measuring STEM identity are often constrained by narrowed, ambiguous definitions that lack inclusivity and fail to account for the full range of experiences informing the development of students’ ideas of themselves in relation to STEM.

This project seeks to address these gaps by utilizing innovative, asset-based approaches to development and validation that center students’ voices, experiences, agency and aspirations.

Tripp and her team have three primary objectives for this work. The first is to operationally define STEM identity by developing a comprehensive definition that accounts for its complex, multifaceted and dynamic nature, along with its intersection with opportunity structures.

The second objective is to engage in the development and validation process for creating STEM identity measurement instruments that are rich in validity, reliability and fairness evidence and will enable researchers and educators to track how students’ STEM identities evolve over time.

Finally, the team aims to develop and explore the effectiveness of machine learning models for ethical, responsible and efficient yet robust analysis of open-ended survey responses to ensure that students’ experiences with and ideas about STEM are meaningfully represented and uncovered.

"As we examine STEM identity, we also want to recognize that it's interrelated with youths’ personal and social identities. These varying identities carry different statuses in different contexts, which can be normalized, celebrated, discounted and/or disregarded. We want to explore the variation and similarities across grade levels, to develop and validate grade-band specific STEM identity measurement instruments that are linked, so we can see this progression from elementary to high school," Tripp said.

A GSE alumna, Tripp completed her master's degree in biology education and continued in the curriculum, instruction and the science of learning (CISL) doctoral program. “It's an honor to be able to work in this capacity, as an alumna of UB GSE and as someone from Buffalo. It's really special.”

The SUNY Research Seed Grant will support Tripp’s team over the next year as they develop and refine new measurement instruments for studying STEM identity. The pilot work will lay the foundation for future measurement and design-based research, aiming to transform how STEM identity is conceptualized, measured and cultivated in education.

Noemi Waight, associate professor of science education in the Department of Learning and Instruction, encouraged Tripp to pursue the CISL program. She has been her graduate student advisor, mentor and close collaborator on several projects.

“Dr. Tripp is an outstanding researcher and teacher. Her purpose is ethic-driven, she is passionate about her work, joyful and caring, and most importantly, she engages a humanizing and justice-focused approach to her work. If there is anyone that deserves this funding support, it is Dr. Tripp,” said Waight.

Tripp’s project collaborators include Xiufeng Liu, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Science Education, who brings expertise in measurement and evaluation in STEM education and whose vision and mentorship have been foundational for this project and throughout Tripp’s postdoc. Ying Sun, GSE associate professor of information science; John Beverley, assistant professor of philosophy and co-director of UB’s National Center for Ontological Research; and Michelle Eades-Baird of SUNY Empire State, who is a GSE alumna, also serve on the project.

"I hope that this opens up more liberatory opportunities for STEM education and that we're taking critical lenses to unpack the ways in which STEM education should be reimagined, to broaden possibilities for STEM identification,” Tripp said. “How can we honor an array of knowledge systems, dispositions and actions in STEM so that more folks envision STEM in expansive ways and are able to see themselves and others who are different from them in STEM, to realize its presence and relevance to their own lives and our collective futures?”

"By broadening the way STEM is defined and taught, hopefully, more students view themselves as capable, valued contributors and decision-makers in STEM, who recognize its complexity and advocate for sustainable futures that promote relations of care and belonging.”