Collaborative Research: Prismatic Community of Practice Incubation Project

This project will foster a network of collaborators, the Prismatic Community of Practice, to advance knowledge about ethical and responsible human subjects research with a focus on minoritized individuals and communities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). All research involving human participants necessarily includes people with, or requires considerations of, minoritized identities.

The project focuses specifically on assembling STEM education researchers, education practitioners, educational professional societies, and Institutional Review Board (IRB) personnel to form a community of practice to understand pertinent ethical issues. It will lead to the creation and piloting of a professional development module. The project will have far-reaching benefits by supporting professional development, the progress of social science methodology, and ethical STEM education research.

The project will expand knowledge about ethical and responsible human subjects research with a focus on minoritized individuals and communities in STEM. There are many ethical considerations in such research, from research design and confidentiality to participant recruitment, instrumentation, data collection, data storage, data analysis, and the sharing of findings.

The project will foster new collaborations and build a community of practice with STEM education researchers, practitioners, professional societies, and personnel from IRB offices. The community of practice will link research and minoritized identities to move the STEM education research field forward in ethical, responsible, and inclusive ways. Project activities will involve developing a pilot module with the community of practice and providing mentoring for postdoctoral fellows and graduate students as part of their involvement in conducting research.

In the long run, project activities will provide benefits to education researchers at-large and research participants through a refined module.

This project is jointly funded through the ER2 program by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

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.