Supporting College Instructors in Improving College Algebra Teaching and Student Outcomes

支持大学教师改善大学代数教学和学生成绩

• 批准号: 2116187
• 负责人: Priya Prasad
• 金额: $ 48.63万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at San Antonio
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-10-15 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2116187&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Supporting; College; Instructors; Improving; Algebra

This project at the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) aims to improve teaching and learning in college algebra through the development of a collaborative faculty development program. For many STEM major pathways, college algebra courses remain a major obstacle for timely degree completion and success. Three objectives will guide the project team. First is to allow instructors to collaborate and observe each other’s teaching. Second is to provide resources (including time) to help instructors learn about evidence-based, student-centered instructional practices. Third is to support long-term transformation implementing a research-supported model for course improvement. Through their experiences, faculty will gain facility with student-centered mathematics teaching practices that will result in improved student success outcomes. The project will impact about 1600 potential STEM students at UTSA per year, better preparing them for subsequent mathematics courses required by STEM degree programs and will build a community of instructors dedicated to the continued improvement of the college. Project research and evaluation will facilitate a deeper understanding of how instructors’ mindset and teaching practices are impacted by the faculty development efforts, while also examining impacts on student outcomes.Instructional transformation at the post-secondary level is difficult to catalyze. Much is known about the effectiveness of student-centered learning in college mathematics, but not much is understood about how instructors at the college level incorporate these ideas and strategies into their classrooms. This project proposes to implement Continuous Improvement (CI), a proven instructional improvement framework, to encourage instructors to include more student-centered learning in their classrooms. The CI framework has previously been studied with elementary mathematics content courses for prospective teachers; this project proposes to implement it in college algebra, which is a new context for this model. The investigators will observe and document how instructors’ thinking about instruction and classroom practices change throughout the grant cycle. Major data sources include observations of instructors’ classrooms, interviews and instructional team meetings, which will help build understanding of the potential opportunities and barriers that college instructors face when incorporating student-centered teaching strategies. The project will then connect instructor change to student learning outcomes, including: 1) growth in conceptual algebra knowledge; 2) pass/fail rates in college algebra; and 3) outcomes of college algebra students in subsequent mathematics courses. The results have the potential to strengthen the field’s understanding of how shifting to student-centered instruction can result in improved student learning and success outcomes in STEM. The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also draw from these approaches to generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.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.

德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥（UTSA）的这个项目旨在通过开发一个合作的教师发展计划来改善大学代数的教学和学习。对于许多STEM专业的途径，大学代数课程仍然是及时完成学位和成功的主要障碍。三个目标将指导项目团队。首先是允许教师合作并观察彼此的教学。其次是提供资源（包括时间），以帮助教师了解以证据为基础，以学生为中心的教学实践。第三是支持长期转型，实施研究支持的课程改进模式。通过他们的经验，教师将获得以学生为中心的数学教学实践，这将导致改善学生的成功成果设施。该项目每年将影响UTSA约1600名潜在的STEM学生，更好地为STEM学位课程所需的后续数学课程做好准备，并将建立一个致力于学院持续改进的教师社区。项目研究和评估将有助于更深入地了解教师发展工作对教师心态和教学实践的影响，同时也会研究对学生成果的影响。关于大学数学以学生为中心的学习的有效性，我们知道得很多，但对于大学教师如何将这些思想和策略融入课堂却知之甚少。本项目建议实施持续改进（CI），一个行之有效的教学改进框架，以鼓励教师在课堂上更多地以学生为中心的学习。CI框架以前已经研究了小学数学内容课程的准教师，本项目建议将其实施在大学代数，这是一个新的背景下，这种模式。调查人员将观察并记录教师对教学和课堂实践的思考在整个资助周期中的变化。主要的数据来源包括教师的课堂观察，访谈和教学团队会议，这将有助于建立潜在的机会和障碍，大学教师面临的理解时，结合以学生为中心的教学策略。然后，该项目将教师的变化与学生的学习成果联系起来，包括：1）概念代数知识的增长; 2）大学代数的通过/失败率; 3）大学代数学生在随后的数学课程中的成果。这些结果有可能加强该领域对转向以学生为中心的教学如何改善学生学习和STEM成功成果的理解。改善本科STEM教育：西班牙裔服务机构（HSI计划）旨在加强本科STEM教育，扩大STEM的参与，并建立HSI的能力。实现这些目标，鉴于不同的性质和背景下的HSIs，需要创新的方法，激励机构和社区转型，促进基础研究（一）参与学生学习，（二）关于如何有效地多样化和增加STEM的参与，以及（三）提高我们对如何在HSIs建立机构能力的理解。HSI计划所支持的项目也将从这些方法中汲取经验，以产生关于如何实现这些目标的新知识。该奖项反映了NSF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。

项目成果

College Instructors’ Perceptions of Barriers & Drivers that Impact the Implementation of Active Learning

大学教师对障碍的看法

• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education
• 作者: Gehrtz, J.;Lee, S.;Prasad, P.V.
• 通讯作者: Prasad, P.V.

Characterizing College Instructors’ Attention During Peer Observations

描述大学教师在同伴观察中的注意力

• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education
• 作者: Jones, E.;Lee, S.;Gehrtz, J.;Prasad, P.V.
• 通讯作者: Prasad, P.V.