Leveraging the AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative to understand and advance the institutionalization of STEM teaching & learning reforms

利用 AAU 本科生 STEM 教育计划来理解和推进 STEM 教学的制度化

• 批准号: 1625532
• 负责人: Emily Miller
• 金额: $ 69.25万
• 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: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-10-01 至 2022-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1625532&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Leveraging; AAU; Undergraduate; STEM; Education

This project will study the institutional transformation processes initiated through the Association of American Universities (AAU) Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative -- a comprehensive change initiative launched in 2011 with funding from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. This is an ambitious project, which seeks to increase the importance of undergraduate STEM education in the nation's top research universities by promoting the implementation of a more systemic view of educational reform. This earlier project initiated change within eight university participants that were selected from a larger pool of AAU applicants to receive seed grants of $500K from AAU. The current project is guided by AAU's "Framework for Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning," developed from leading theories and research on institutional change. That Framework identifies a set of key institutional elements that need to be addressed in order to bring about sustainable change, emphasizing the separate roles of senior university administrators (the top-down component), individual faculty (the bottom-up component), sub academic units in the form of departments and colleges (a middle-out component), and the professional disciplines. The project will document the intricacies of reform within each of the eight universities, producing a set of eight case studies. The intellectual merit of the project lies in going beyond the initial phase of implementing the reforms to asking the questions about what factors at the institutional level facilitated the launch, acceptance, success, spread and impact of the reforms. Newer interview questions will be piggy-backed onto the existing time frames for the follow-up inquires in year 4 of the original AAU project's time frame (2016) and additional entities and individuals with the universities will be the focus of the newer investigations. Using the combined data, the PI team expects that newer information about factors important to reform, and the relative importance, priority, or sequence of the factors, to emerge. There is significant value in understanding the complex processes underlying progress at partner institutions in the Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative. Identifying cross-cutting trends (as opposed to institution-specific factors) would be especially valuable. The team also seeks to develop a generalizable, research-based snapshot of successful institutional reform.

该项目将研究通过美国大学协会(AAU)本科生STEM教育倡议发起的机构转型过程，该倡议是2011年发起的一项全面变革倡议，由赫尔姆斯利慈善信托基金提供资金。这是一个雄心勃勃的项目，旨在通过推动实施更系统的教育改革观点，提高本科STEM教育在全国顶尖研究型大学的重要性。这个较早的项目在8个大学参与者中发起了变革，这些大学参与者是从更大的AAU申请者库中挑选出来的，将从AAU获得50万美元的种子赠款。目前的项目是由AAU的“本科STEM教与学的系统变革框架”指导的，该框架是从制度变革的领先理论和研究中发展而来的。该框架确定了为实现可持续变革而需要解决的一系列关键体制要素，强调了大学高级行政人员(自上而下的组成部分)、个别教员(自下而上的组成部分)、系和学院形式的次级学术单位(中间的组成部分)以及专业学科的单独作用。该项目将记录这八所大学内部错综复杂的改革，制作一套八个案例研究。该项目的学术价值在于超越了实施改革的初始阶段，提出了机构一级的哪些因素促进了改革的启动、接受、成功、传播和影响的问题。更新的面试问题将被添加到现有的时间框架中，以便在AAU项目最初的时间框架(2016)的第四年进行后续调查，而更多的实体和大学个人将成为新的调查的重点。使用合并的数据，PI团队预计会出现关于改革重要因素的更新信息，以及这些因素的相对重要性、优先顺序或顺序。了解伙伴机构在本科生STEM教育倡议中取得进展的复杂过程具有重要价值。确定贯穿各领域的趋势(而不是具体机构的因素)将特别有价值。该团队还寻求为成功的机构改革制定一个可概括的、基于研究的快照。