Scaling Undergraduate STEM Education Reforms at AAU Institutions

该项目将解决高等教育体制改革的理论和研究方面的一个空白。拟议的定性混合方法研究将审查专业协会在努力在本科生STEM教育中广泛使用循证教学实践方面的作用。该研究项目建议超越关注个人和教职员工团队的变革模式，转向关注体制和系统流程和机制的变革模式。这项拟议的研究将审查这样一种假设，即为了广泛重塑STEM教学，必须对最精英机构的规范进行重塑，以便将这些类型的机构定位为努力扩大高等教育中循证教学实践的榜样。实地研究将从文化和系统的角度看待制度变革，并由美国大学协会(AAU)努力检验文献中确定的促进高等教育制度变革的三种战略的相关性：创造讨论/审议；网络；以及对改革的外部支持。这项拟议的研究将使用AAU STEM倡议作为一项实时创新，以审查一个国家组织在其成员中扩大循证教学实践方面可以发挥的作用。定性的混合方法研究设计符合一种理论观点，这种观点借鉴了强调观察和访谈对了解变化过程的重要性的社会认知和文化和人类发展学派。理论方法认为，所研究的现象是社会变化过程的表现，最好通过参与者观察和半结构化访谈来研究，目的是了解这些现象在规模变化中所起的作用。考虑到行为是由内在的信念、感知和动机驱动的，访谈对于揭示观察到的行为的动机和感知是很重要的。

The project will address a gap in theory and research on institutional change in higher education. The proposed qualitative mixed methods research study will examine the role of professional societies in efforts to implement wide-scale use of evidenced-based teaching practices in undergraduate STEM education. The research project proposes to move beyond a change model focused on individual and teams of faculty to a change model focused on institutional and systems processes and mechanisms. The proposed study will examine the assumption that to broadly reshape STEM teaching, a reshaping of the norms of the most elite institutions must be undertaken in order to position these types of institutions as role models in efforts to scale-up evidence-based teaching practices in post-secondary education.The field-based study will bring together a cultural and systems perspective on institutional change with an effort by the Association of American Universities (AAU) to test the relevance of three strategies that are identified in the literature as facilitating institutional change in higher education: creating discussions/deliberations; networks; and external support for reform. The proposed study will use the AAU STEM Initiative as a real-time innovation to examine the role a national organization can play in achieving scale-up of evidence-based teaching practices among its members. A qualitative mixed methods research design is aligned with a theoretical perspective that draws on social cognition and cultural and human development schools of thought that emphasize the importance of observations and interviews for understanding change processes. The theoretical approach posits that the phenomena under study are manifestations of social change processes, which are best studied through the use of participant-observation and semi-structured interviews with the goal of developing an understanding of the roles these phenomena play in scaling change. Considering that behaviors are driven by internal beliefs, perceptions and motives, interviews are important to uncover motivations for and perceptions of observed behaviors.