CAREER - The Winding Roads to Effective Teaching: Characterizing the Progressions in Instructional Knowledge and Practices of STEM Faculty

改善本科科学教育的国家倡议建立在几十年来对有效教学实践的研究和发展的基础上。这些基于证据的教学实践(EBIP)促进了学生对科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)的概念理解和良好态度，在女性和代表性不足群体的成员中观察到的影响最大。通过提高保留率和吸引更多样化的学生进入科学领域，这些以研究为基础的科学教学方法可以帮助满足国家对培养STEM毕业生和推进劳动力发展目标的需求。挑战是在全国范围内促进这些教学实践的有效利用。STEM教师是任何成功的教学改革的核心，但令人惊讶的是，关于他们的教学情况，人们对他们知之甚少。随着大量的资源和努力目前集中在全国大学层面的STEM教学实践上，迫切需要描述STEM教员的教学知识库、教学实践、两者之间的关系以及这些知识和实践随着时间的推移而取得的进展。此外，有必要在不同的改革环境下(短期研讨会与长达一学期的专业发展；围绕教学的不同部门和机构文化)以及处于学术生涯不同阶段的教师描述这些进步的特点。这项基础性研究的结果将为STEM教员的教学和教学实践知识库的不同进展提供关键的见解，这将为当前国家和地方旨在在大学设置的STEM课程中广泛实施EBIP的改革努力提供信息。这个NSF教师早期职业发展项目将解决基于学科的教育研究文献中关于STEM教员教学和教学实践知识库的巨大差距。具体地说，该项目将描述STEM教员的实践理论及其与教学实践的结合是如何在不同的背景下发展的：(A)教员的经验水平；(B)部门和机构的气候、文化和报酬结构；以及(C)正式和非正式的专业发展经验。本研究基于以教师为中心的系统改革模型，该模型描述了教师关于教学的决策过程以及对这些过程的影响。为了解决研究问题，将实施收敛的纵向混合方法设计。量化数据将包括调查、课堂观察和课程人工制品。定性部分将由嵌入的集体案例研究组成。收集的数据将包括对教师和课程人工制品的采访。这些研究活动将加强对STEM教员a)教学教学知识(PCK)要素的了解，b)对教学的取向和对教学的信念，c)教学实践，以及d)这三种结构在不同背景下的一致性(例如，处于不同学术生涯水平的教员，经历不同类型的部门和机构环境的教员，以及参与不同类型的正式和非正式专业发展的教员)。这项基础性研究将进一步为理论框架提供信息，并为整个STEM社区提供关于STEM教师专业发展有效实践的重要见解。研究和教育计划将完全整合：教育计划的一个组成部分，即内布拉斯加-林肯大学(UNL)STEM教师的专业发展计划，将作为部分研究的背景；反过来，研究结果将为专业发展计划的设计和实施提供信息，也将提供与UNL STEM教师提供一对一教学咨询的机会，并将为改革的教学实践设计研究生水平的课程提供参考。

National initiatives to improve undergraduate science education build upon decades of research on and development of effective teaching practices. These evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) promote students' conceptual understanding and favorable attitudes about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), with the greatest impacts observed among women and members of underrepresented groups. By improving retention rates and attracting a more diverse student population to the sciences, these research-based ways of teaching science can help address the national need to educate STEM-literate graduates and advance workforce development goals. The challenge is fostering the effective use of these teaching practices on a national scale. STEM faculty members are at the core of any successful instructional reform, yet surprisingly little is known about them with respect to their teaching. As extensive resources and efforts are currently focused on transforming STEM instructional practices at the college level nationally, there is a critical need to characterize STEM faculty members' knowledge base for teaching, instructional practices, relationships between the two, as well as progressions of this knowledge and these practices over time. Moreover, there is a need to characterize these progressions under varying reform environments (short workshops versus semester-long professional development; different departmental and institutional culture around teaching), as well as for faculty at various points of their academic career. Results of this foundational research will provide critical insight into the diverse progressions of STEM faculty members' knowledge base for teaching and instructional practices, which will inform current national and local reform efforts that aim at the widespread implementation of EBIPs in STEM courses in college settings.This NSF Faculty Early Career Development project will address a wide gap in the discipline-based education research literature about STEM faculty members' knowledge base for teaching and instructional practices. Specifically, the project will characterize how STEM faculty members' practical theories and their integration with instructional practices evolve in the contexts of different (a) levels of experience as faculty members; (b) climate, culture, and rewards structures of departments and institutions; and (c) formal and informal professional development experiences. The research is grounded in the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform Model, which describes faculty members' decision-making processes about teaching and influences impacting these processes. A convergent, longitudinal mixed methods design will be implemented to address the research questions. Quantitative data will include surveys, classroom observations, and course artifacts. The qualitative component will consist of an embedded collective case study. Data collected will include interviews with faculty and course artifacts. These research activities will result in an enhanced understanding of STEM faculty members' a) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) elements, b) orientations toward teaching and beliefs about teaching, and c) instructional practices, as well as d) alignment among these three constructs under various contexts (e.g., faculty at different levels of their academic career, faculty experiencing different types of departmental and institutional climate, and faculty participating in different types of formal and informal professional development). This foundational research will further inform the theoretical framework and provide critical insights on effective practices for STEM faculty professional development to the STEM community at large. The research and education program will be fully integrated: one component of the education program, a professional development program for STEM faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), will serve as the context for part of the study; in turn, the results of the study will inform the design and implementation of the professional development program but will also provide opportunities to offer one-on-one teaching consultations with UNL STEM faculty and will inform the design of a graduate-level curriculum on reformed instructional practices.