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

职业生涯 - 有效教学的曲折之路：描述 STEM 教师教学知识和实践的进步

• 批准号: 1552448
• 负责人: Marilyne Stains
• 金额: $ 94.12万
• 依托单位: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-03-01 至 2020-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1552448&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Winding; Roads; Effective; Teaching

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.

改善本科科学教育的国家举措建立在数十年对有效教学实践的研究和开发的基础上。这些循证教学实践 (EBIP) 促进学生对科学、技术、工程和数学 (STEM) 的概念理解和良好态度，其中对女性和代表性不足群体成员的影响最大。通过提高保留率并吸引更多样化的学生群体学习科学，这些基于研究的科学教学方法可以帮助满足国家教育具有 STEM 素养的毕业生和推进劳动力发展目标的需求。面临的挑战是促进在全国范围内有效利用这些教学实践。 STEM 教师是任何成功教学改革的核心，但令人惊讶的是，人们对他们的教学知之甚少。由于目前大量的资源和努力都集中在改变全国大学层面的 STEM 教学实践上，因此迫切需要描述 STEM 教师的教学知识库、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的进展。此外，有必要描述不同改革环境下的这些进展（短期研讨会与为期一个学期的专业发展；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。这项基础研究的结果将为了解 STEM 教职人员的教学和教学实践知识库的不同进展提供重要见解，这将为当前旨在在大学环境中的 STEM 课程中广泛实施 EBIP 的国家和地方改革努力提供信息。这个 NSF 教员早期职业发展项目将填补基于学科的教育研究文献中关于 STEM 教职人员的教学和教学实践知识库的巨大空白。具体来说，该项目将描述 STEM 教职人员的实践理论及其与教学实践的结合如何在不同的经验水平的背景下发展。 (b) 部门和机构的氛围、文化和奖励结构； (c) 正式和非正式的专业发展经验。该研究以以教师为中心的系统性改革模型为基础，该模型描述了教师的教学决策过程以及影响这些过程的因素。将实施收敛的纵向混合方法设计来解决研究问题。定量数据将包括调查、课堂观察和课程工件。定性部分将包括嵌入式集体案例研究。收集的数据将包括对教师的访谈和课程工件。这些研究活动将增强对 STEM 教职人员的理解：a) 教学内容知识 (PCK) 要素，b) 教学方向和教学信念，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职人员、经历不同类型的院系和机构氛围的教职人员、以及参与不同类型的正式和非正式活动的教职人员） 专业发展）。这项基础研究将进一步为理论框架提供信息，并为整个 STEM 社区的 STEM 教师专业发展的有效实践提供重要见解。研究和教育计划将完全整合：教育计划的一个组成部分，即内布拉斯加大学林肯分校 (UNL) STEM 教员的专业发展计划，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，同时也将提供与 UNL STEM 教师进行一对一教学咨询的机会，并将为设计改革教学实践的研究生课程提供信息。