Examining The Roles of STEM Teaching Faculty in Advancing the Use of Evidence-based Teaching Practices at Research Universities

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Recognizing the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields to the future of our nation, recent reports have called for changes in existing educational practices to increase the quality, number, and diversity of STEM graduates. These calls have resulted in development of evidence-based teaching practices that have been shown to improve student outcomes. One major question now is, how can we spread the use of these teaching practices on a larger scale? This project examines the intersection of two national issues relevant to research-focused universities: (1) The need for improvement in undergraduate STEM teaching and learning through the use of evidence-based instructional strategies; and (2) the hiring of tenure-track teaching-focused faculty whose responsibility is teaching undergraduate courses that improve undergraduate STEM teaching, learning, and scholarship. This project will investigate the degree to which Lecturers with Security of Employment (LSOEs, who are tenure-eligible teaching-focused faculty) act as effective change agents within their departments, thus contributing to improving STEM teaching at research-focused institutions. The research team hypothesizes that the hiring of LSOE faculty will act as a major catalyst for increasing the adoption and sustainability of evidence-based instructional strategies by departmental colleagues. To examine the two national issues relevant to research-focused universities, the research team will use multiple analytic approaches, including a quasi-experimental two way fixed effects model to control for variations in students and courses, an innovative observation technique that documents and assesses classroom behaviors, graph theoretic analysis of the structure and characteristics of teaching networks within research sites, and transcript analyses of interview data on beliefs about and approaches to teaching. Through these analyses, the research team aims to identify whether the LSOE model can be a mechanism implemented in research-intensive institutions across the country to transform STEM faculty teaching practices and improve student outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.