Component-Based Research (CBR) in STEM Education: Exploring a Potentially Transformative Research Paradigm and Infrastructure

This Mid-scale Research Infrastructure Conference will explore component-based research (CBR) as a possible new paradigm for research in STEM education. In addition, participants will explore what might comprise a corresponding infrastructure to support the widespread use of CBR. When using CBR, researchers look not only at an educational innovation as a whole, but also at its individual parts.

Additionally, they systematically describe the contexts within which the innovation is happening. By doing so, researchers can determine more than whether a program “works.” Over time, CBR may enable researchers to identify the parts of an innovation that work for particular groups of students in particular settings, resulting in customizable and more impactful innovations.

A CBR paradigm may also help address some long-standing challenges in STEM education research. For example, while much research has informed many instances of educational improvement, the field has been less successful at accumulating knowledge over time. CBR, with its specific descriptions of innovation and circumstantial components may assist with this problem.

Also, STEM education programs that work well in one situation don’t necessarily work well in a different one, leaving local educators the challenge of adapting the innovation without guidance. CBR approaches, along with supporting research infrastructure, can support data-informed adaptations that enable practitioners to customize education innovations for their specific circumstances.

CBR approaches also have potential to make data more readily available to practitioners, instructional materials developers, and others who can use it to inform their work. This two-day conference will bring together 30 individuals to examine and articulate possible steps for bringing the CBR paradigm to the broad field of STEM education research. Attendees will include individuals who work in a range of capacities in STEM education and STEM education research, as well as scholars who have been using CBR-like approaches in other disciplines such as public health.

Additionally, attendees will include a strong representation of people from groups who have historically been excluded from STEM fields. The two primary outcomes of the meeting are 1) community building and knowledge generation, and 2) a monograph summarizing the work of the conference and next steps.

This conference will focus on how the field might operationalize the CBR paradigm in STEM education research. It will be organized by five dimensions that need to be developed in order to have a foundation for further CBR work, with additional attention on the research infrastructure needed for such work. Specifically, there will be five working groups that examine: 1) approaches to developing collaborative language, including taxonomies, ontologies, and standards; 2) innovative analytic approaches that can address the complexity of CBR analyses; 3) ways CBR can leverage data mining, AI, and other elements of data science that can support CBR; 4) databases, design, and other infrastructure to ensure accessibility to CBR-based data and support its application in the field; and 5) the challenge of engaging the field, developing collaborations and consensus, and creating training and further education.

Alternating with group work will be “consultation seminars” that entail having working groups present their work to other working groups who will interrogate the work to raise challenges, gain new insights, and identify ideas to develop as well as those to jettison. After the conference, participants, will be invited to contribute to the creation of a monograph either through writing contributions or through review.

This project is supported through a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and the Walton Family Foundation. Funding is also provided by NSF’s EDU Core Research Program.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.