The Transforming Research in Undergraduate STEM Education(TRUSE) conference seeks to transform the compartmentalized way in which mathematics and science education research is conducted and reported by bringing together leading researchers in undergraduate mathematics, physics, and chemistry education for four-day intensive conferences. The conferences are designed to create collaborative research programs and build capacity for integrative work by involving discipline-based education researchers and a significant number of graduate students in mathematics and science education. The theme of the conferences is to connect researchers across disciplines with complementary interests and expertise to one another. The conferences drive forward the integration of education research in STEM disciplines, enabling more rapid advances than could otherwise be achieved independently. Sharing insights across disciplines as well as results from cross-disciplinary studies have the potential to lead to more robust research methodologies suited for use in all STEM communities, the development of areas of common interest and connectivity, and the development of transformative integrated practices. To promote collaboration among researchers in the math, physics, and chemistry education communities, the project in 2010 offered peer-reviewed mini-grants to teams of researchers. These fostered interdisciplinary research needed to address areas of inquiry common to math, physics, and chemistry education.TRUSE 2012 attracted 131 conference participants in the STEM disciplines. The conference included a broader representation of STEM disciplines including four members of the National Academies of Science DBER committee. All four mini-grant proposals reported on the progress of their research. Participants noted that the opportunities to learn about different approaches to DBER in STEM, to network, and to obtain feedback and new ideas about research were the strengths of the conference. The presentation will describe the conference and plans for its continuation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the NSF-DUE-0941515 for support of this project.

Transforming research in undergraduate STEM Education: A conference for discipline-based education researchers

246th National Meeting (2013)

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