ADVANCE and Beyond: Understanding Processes of Institutional Change to Promote STEM Equity and Education

推进与超越：理解促进STEM公平和教育的制度变革过程本研究在寻求为致力于促进STEM高等教育系统性制度变革的学者和从业者提供循证支持方面具有重要意义。要解决导致不公平结果的顽固问题，如有偏见的教师任期和晋升过程、不平等的领导机会和敌对的部门氛围，需要的不仅仅是一次干预。由于这些问题根植于复杂的高等教育体系中，采取系统性方法意味着部署多种变革手段，并战略性地将这些干预措施结合起来。研究小组将研究组织变革的过程，以填补广泛构想的组织变革理论与具体制度变革努力中过程和干预措施的实际实施之间的差距，以促进STEM公平和教育。提高对这些基本变革过程的理解将有助于以加强这些努力成果的方式将变革理论、目标和干预措施联系起来。有了强有力的研究结果来指导他们的工作，变革领导者可以更好地促进、联系和维持他们设计的特定变革干预措施；让领导者和利益相关者参与进来；并对阻力或挫折作出反应。本研究的目标是描述重要的脚手架过程，这些过程支持并将一系列具体的变革干预措施与全面的变革计划联系起来，从而增强其协同效应并深化制度影响。该研究团队将分析由NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation （IT）项目支持的项目，该项目开发了一系列干预措施，以解决STEM院系性别不平等的多方面根源。由于这些项目已经建立了一个确定“该做什么”的完备的干预体系，因此它们可以作为学习“如何”最好地完成这种变革工作的良好研究场所。通过文件、访谈和我们称之为结构化专家询问对话的互动焦点小组，本研究旨在识别、分析和解释在股权导向变革项目中看到的脚手架过程。然后，研究团队成员将与ADVANCE内外的公平导向变革项目的经验丰富的变革领导者一起深化和测试他们对这些过程的理解，从而探索这些新知识的可转移性。研究结果将强调促进制度转型的过程，以实现不同教师的充分和公平参与，以及可能鼓励或抑制学术劳动力包容性的正式和非正式组织因素的作用。在会议和期刊上交流的结果将针对那些能够将关于脚手架过程的新理论与其他STEM教育变革项目的研究联系起来的学者。与科学教育研究中心合作，通过研讨会、网络研讨会和基于网络的战略工具包进行传播，将针对那些开展以教师为基础的制度变革工作的变革推动者，以改善STEM教育和扩大参与，无论是通过类似ADVANCE的项目，还是通过解决学生经历的项目，如无效教学、脱离学习和排斥性环境。该项目由EHR核心研究（ECR）计划资助，该计划支持推进STEM学习和学习环境基础研究、扩大STEM参与和STEM劳动力发展的工作。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

ADVANCE and Beyond: Understanding Processes of Institutional Change to Promote STEM Equity and EducationThis research has significance in seeking to provide evidence-based support to scholars and practitioners who are working to promote systemic institutional change in STEM higher education. To solve stubborn problems that lead to inequitable outcomes, such as biased faculty tenure and promotion processes, uneven leadership opportunities, and hostile departmental climates, requires more than a single intervention. Because these problems are embedded in complex higher education systems, taking a systemic approach means deploying multiple levers for change and combining these interventions strategically. The research team will study processes of organizational change in order to fill the gap between broadly conceived organizational change theories and practical implementation of processes and interventions in specific institutional change efforts to advance STEM equity and education. Improved understanding of these essential change processes will help to link change theories, goals, and interventions in ways that strengthen the outcomes of such efforts. With robust research findings to guide their work, change leaders can better promote, connect, and sustain the particular change interventions they have designed; engage leaders and stakeholders; and respond to resistance or setbacks. The goals of the study are to characterize important scaffolding processes that support and link a suite of specific change interventions into comprehensive change plans, thereby enhancing their synergistic effects and deepening institutional impact. The research team will analyze projects supported by NSF's ADVANCE Institutional Transformation (IT) program, which have developed portfolios of interventions to address the multi-faceted sources of gender inequity on STEM faculties. Because these projects already draw on a well-established body of interventions that identify “what to do,” they serve as good study sites to learn “how” such change work can best be accomplished. Using documents, interviews, and interactive focus groups that we call Structured Expert Enquiry Dialogues, the study aims to identify, analyze, and explain scaffolding processes as seen in equity-directed change projects. The research team members will then deepen and test their understanding of these processes with experienced change leaders of equity-directed change projects both within and beyond ADVANCE, thereby exploring the transferability of this new knowledge. The research findings will emphasize processes that facilitate institutional transformation toward full and equitable participation of diverse faculty, and the roles of both formal and informal organizational factors that may encourage or inhibit inclusion in the academic workforce. Communication of the results in conferences and journals will target scholars who can connect new theory about scaffolding processes to studies of other STEM education change projects. Dissemination through workshops, webinars, and the web-based StratEGIC Toolkit, in partnership with the Science Education Research Center, will target change agents who carry out work on faculty-based institutional change to improve STEM education and broaden participation, whether through projects similar to ADVANCE or those that address student experiences such as ineffective teaching, disengaged learning, and exclusionary environments.This project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.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.