Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

1 Introduction
Pages 7-18

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 7...
... Undergraduate education in science and engineering plays a crucial role in providing future generations with the knowledge and skills to address these challenges. Undergraduate education in science and engineering in the United States serves multiple purposes, including providing all students with foundational knowledge and skills, motivating some students to complete degrees in science or engineering, and providing students who wish to pursue careers in science or engineering with the knowledge and skills required to be successful.
From page 8...
... . Colleges and universities also face the challenge of serving an increasingly socially, economically, and ethnically diverse undergraduate population entering college classrooms directly from high school, after a military career or other life experiences, or from postsecondary educational experiences at another institution.
From page 9...
... All fields of DBER share a common focus on issues that are important for understanding and fostering student learning of the most crucial topics, techniques, procedures, and ways of knowing that define the particular discipline. This focus includes investigating student learning within that discipline per se, along with issues affecting enrollment and retention of students in classes and the adoption of best practices by instructors.
From page 10...
... factors that affect student motivation to initially engage in and then to persist in the learning necessary to understand the discipline and apply findings of the discipline, and (3) research methods appropriate for investigating human thinking, motivation, and learning.
From page 11...
... . In this section we consider DBER alongside three related fields: the scholarship of teaching and learning, educational psychology, and cognitive science.
From page 12...
... Thus, the boundaries between SoTL and DBER are blurred and some researchers belong to both the SoTL and DBER communities. While DBER scholars gravitate to discipline-specific journals, SoTL researchers mostly publish in broad journals on teaching and learning such as the Journal of College Student Development or through the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (IJSoTL)
From page 13...
... Cognitive Science, the flagship journal of the Cognitive Science Society, publishes research on intelligent systems that is multidisciplinary across two or more of these named disciplines. The journal historically has not published many articles related to education and would consider many DBER studies -- such as solving problems from undergraduate physics and reasoning from diagrams in evolutionary biology -- as belonging to the field of cognitive psychology, which includes the study of problem solving and diagrammatic reasoning in undergraduates.
From page 14...
... synthesize empirical research on undergraduate teaching and learn ing in the sciences, 2. examine the extent to which this research currently influences undergraduate science instruction, and 3.
From page 15...
... Determining the state of scholarship includes examining the types of questions that DBER scholars ask or the problems they study, how they study them, what counts as evidence, and key findings. It also includes examining degree programs, postdoctoral and faculty positions, conferences, professional societies, journals, and other indicators that reflect the development and
From page 16...
... Equipped with this foundational understanding, we addressed issues that cut across disciplines by considering some general principles of teaching and learning from cognitive science and educational psychology. Finally, we examined a broader set of factors that influence faculty, departmental, and institutional change, and considered a set of strategies designed to promote research-based instructional and institutional change in undergraduate science instruction.
From page 17...
... Another aspect of advancing DBER relates to preparing and placing future faculty members. However, no systemically collected data existed on graduate or postdoctoral programs or career pathways for discipline-based education researchers, so we also commissioned a paper that would allow us to explore the role of postdoctoral programs in preparing DBER faculty.
From page 18...
... . Because the fields of DBER have been and will continue to be an important way of improving science and engineering education, our hope is that the findings and recommendations in this report invite and assist postsecondary institutions to increase interest and research activity in DBER.


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.