Collaborative Research: Scaling Support for Non-tenure Track STEM Faculty through Learning Communities and Design Teams

合作研究：通过学习社区和设计团队扩大对非终身教授 STEM 教师的支持

• 批准号: 1914802
• 负责人: Kelly Mack
• 金额: $ 206.4万
• 依托单位: Association of American Colleges and Universities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-10-01 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1914802&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Scaling; Support; Non

With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources Program (IUSE:EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by improving the STEM teaching and learning environment for undergraduate STEM students. It will do so by increasing supports for non-tenure track faculty members, who teach most of undergraduate STEM courses, including the critical introductory courses. The project proposes to develop a national, research-based Institute for supporting non-tenure track faculty, which will be held annually for four consecutive years. The Institute will recruit small teams of faculty and administrators from 50 college and university campuses. There, the teams will learn about supports for non-tenure track faculty and develop a plan for supporting the work of adjunct faculty on their campuses. Examples of supports include professional development learning communities, as well as campus policies and practices that support non-tenure track faculty. Although many efforts are underway to develop and adopt effective curricula and pedagogies in STEM courses, none of these important innovations will succeed without addressing support for the non-tenure track faculty who teach the majority of these courses. Thus, this project is significant because it addresses an overlooked challenge in undergraduate STEM that has enormous potential to improve STEM education broadly. In addition to developing the Institute for supporting non-tenure track faculty, the project will engage in research on two areas that will contribute to the goals of better supporting non-tenure track faculty in STEM: 1. formative research aimed at evaluation of the Institute; and 2. summative research focused on the Institute's goals and outcomes. The research will create new knowledge about models of faculty learning communities, particularly for non-tenure track STEM faculty. The Institute and the related research will be significant to the undergraduate STEM reform community by providing information about ways to use structured topical learning communities to improve teaching among non-tenure track faculty. The major potential contributions of this project to society include the impacts on the 50 participating colleges and universities, which will have improved support for their non-tenure track faculty and, thus, helped these faculty to improve their instruction. Because of the project, thousands of faculty will have professional development opportunities to improve STEM introductory courses, hundreds of thousands of STEM students will experience better STEM learning environments, and a national model will be developed for how to best support non-tenure track faculty in improving their teaching and learning environments. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.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.

在NSF改善本科STEM教育计划：教育和人力资源计划（IUSE：EHR）的支持下，该项目旨在通过改善本科生STEM学生的STEM教学和学习环境来服务国家利益。 它将通过增加对非陈旧轨道教师的支持来做到这一点，他们教授大多数本科STEM课程，包括关键的入门课程。该项目建议开发一个基于国家，研究的支持非终身轨道教师的研究所，该研究所将连续四年每年举行。 该研究所将招募来自50个大学和大学校园的小组和管理人员小组。 在那里，团队将了解非终身轨道教师的支持，并制定一项计划，以支持兼职教师在校园中的工作。 支持的例子包括专业发展学习社区，以及支持非终身轨道教师的校园政策和实践。 尽管在STEM课程中开发和采用有效的课程和教学法正在进行许多努力，但如果没有解决对大多数这些课程的非终身轨道教师的支持，这些重要的创新都不会成功。 因此，该项目具有重要意义，因为它解决了本科茎的挑战，该挑战具有广泛改善STEM教育的巨大潜力。除了开发支持非终身轨道教师研究所外，该项目还将研究两个领域的研究，这些领域将有助于更好地支持STEM中的非特征轨道教师：1。旨在评估研究所的形成性研究；和2。总结研究的重点是该研究所的目标和成果。这项研究将创造有关教师学习社区模型的新知识，尤其是对于非特征轨道STEM教师的知识。该研究所和相关研究将对本科STEM改革社区至关重要，通过提供有关使用结构化的局部学习社区来改善非终身轨道教师教学的信息。 该项目对社会的主要潜在贡献包括对50所参与学院和大学的影响，这将改善对其非终身轨道教师的支持，从而帮助这些教师改善了他们的教学。 由于该项目，成千上万的教职员工将有专业发展的机会来改善STEM入门课程，成千上万的STEM学生将体验更好的STEM学习环境，并且将开发出一种国家模型，以最大程度地支持非终身轨道教师在改善其教学和学习环境方面。 NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型的轨道，该计划支持努力在高等教育和学科社区的机构中转变和改善STEM教育的努力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的评估来进行评估的审查标准。