Project Kaleidoscope: Encouraging Collaborations for Developing Undergraduate STEM Faculty

这个教师发展项目，通过强调在机构层面的行动，正在提高1200多个校园的科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）教师群体的能力，以加强本科生的学习。在过去的五年中，已有642所学校积极参与了PKAL，该项目将使积极发展STEM师资队伍的高校数量增加一倍，以加强学生的学习。活动包括一系列研讨会和活动，旨在帮助建立和扩大专业组织，大学和学院以及致力于促进STEM本科教育卓越的教师社区。除了讨论改变校园和院系本科教育方式的有效方法外，这一系列研讨会还提供了制定行动计划和原型所需的信息：STEM教师发展手册；互动的网络存在将有助于促进这些社会网络的发展，并传播《手册》和为项目编写的其他材料；以及跟踪校园变革进程并确定有效变革推动者的研究议程。这个项目的智力价值在于它在制度层面上明确地联系了本科STEM学生应该知道和能够做什么，以及他们的教师应该知道和能够做什么。该项目采用基于研究的、真实的、主动学习的教学实践来构建教师发展活动，并正在开发一个研究组成部分，旨在确定这些策略的有效性，以及社交网络在促进和实现有意义的变革方面发挥的关键作用。这个项目更广泛的影响是，它将变革的焦点从单一的STEM教师或部门转移到机构、州和国家层面。通过与地区机构网络合作，如中西部联合学院和明尼苏达州州立学院和大学系统，以及与国家组织合作，如美国学院和大学协会、本科研究委员会、美国数学协会等，该项目推动了对学生学习目标的讨论，而不仅仅是与个别班级或学习课程有关。让广泛的利益相关者参与制定这些目标并确保学生实现这些目标的工作。它利用教职员工的工作，通过他们的学科协会，给他们的努力冒险的支持，并为他们的工作提供专业认可。这种扩散模型建立在埃弗雷特·罗杰斯（Everett Rogers）（《创新的扩散》，2003年，自由出版社）的工作基础上，他对创新扩散的研究表明，建立和利用网络的价值，包括那些“拥有共同意义、信仰和相互理解”的人，以及那些跨越“一个系统中不同社会个体的集合”的人。

This faculty development project, by its emphasis on action at an institutional level, is enhancing the capabilities of groups of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty on over 1,200 campuses to strengthen undergraduate student learning. Building from the current base of 642 campuses that have been actively engaged with PKAL over the past five years, this project is doubling the number of colleges and universities actively working to develop STEM faculty so as to strengthen student learning. Activities include a series of workshops and events designed to help build and expand the community of professional organizations, universities and colleges, and faculty engaged in promoting excellence in undergraduate education in STEM. In addition to proceedings focusing on effective ways to change campus and departmental approaches to undergraduate education, this series of workshops is providing the information necessary to build action plans and prototypes for: a STEM Faculty Development Handbook; an interactive web presence that will serve to foster the development of these social networks and to disseminate the Handbook and other materials developed for the project; and a research agenda for following the course of change on campuses and determining effective change agents.The intellectual merit of this project is its explicit connection at the institutional level between what undergraduate STEM students should know and be able to do and what their faculty should know and be able to do. The project adapts research-based, real-world, active-learning pedagogical practices in constructing faculty development activities and is developing a research component that seeks to determine the effectiveness of these strategies, and the critical role that social networks play in promoting and achieving meaningful change. The broader impact of this project is that it moves the locus of transformative change from the single STEM faculty member or department to the institutional, state, and national level. By partnering with regional institutional networks, such as the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, as well as with national organizations, such as the Association of American Colleges & Universities, the Council on Undergraduate Research, the Mathematical Association of America, and others, the project pushes discussions of goals for student learning beyond those concerned with individual classes or courses of study, involving a wide range of stakeholders in the work of setting these goals and ensuring that students achieve them. It leverages the work of faculty members through their disciplinary societies, giving them the support to take risks in their efforts and providing professional recognition for their work. This model of diffusion builds on the work of Everett Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations, 2003, Free Press) whose research on the diffusion of innovations indicates the value of building and leveraging networks that include people who "share common meanings, beliefs, and mutual understandings" and those that span "sets of socially dissimilar individuals in a system".