Scaling Undergraduate STEM Education Reforms at AAU Institutions

扩大 AAU 机构的本科 STEM 教育改革

• 批准号: 1432766
• 负责人: Emily Miller
• 金额: $ 60.01万
• 依托单位: Association of American Universities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-15 至 2019-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1432766&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Scaling; Undergraduate; STEM; Education; Reforms

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.

该项目将解决高等教育制度变革理论和研究方面的空白。提出的定性混合方法研究将检查专业协会在努力实施大规模使用基于证据的本科STEM教育教学实践中的作用。该研究项目建议超越以教师个人和团队为重点的变化模型，转向以机构和系统过程和机制为重点的变化模型。拟议的研究将检验这样一个假设，即为了广泛地重塑STEM教学，必须重塑最精英机构的规范，以便将这些类型的机构定位为在中学后教育中扩大循证教学实践的榜样。以实地为基础的研究将结合美国大学协会（AAU）的努力，从文化和制度的角度来看待体制变革，以测试文献中确定的促进高等教育体制变革的三种策略的相关性：创造讨论/审议；网络;以及外部对改革的支持。拟议的研究将使用AAU STEM倡议作为实时创新，以检查国家组织在其成员中实现扩大循证教学实践方面可以发挥的作用。定性混合方法研究设计与借鉴社会认知、文化和人类发展思想学派的理论观点相一致，这些思想学派强调观察和访谈对理解变化过程的重要性。理论方法认为，所研究的现象是社会变革过程的表现，最好通过使用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。考虑到行为是由内部信念、观念和动机驱动的，访谈对于揭示观察到的行为的动机和观念很重要。