CAREER: Overcoming Pedagogical Inertia: Amplifying the Course Transformation Narratives of Engineering Education's Positive Deviants

作为一个领域，工程教育一直致力于克服变革的障碍，通常是通过需要高水平行政和财政支持的解决方案。在产生影响的同时，这些解决方案有可能错过数百个无法获得这些资源的部门和机构。此外，在资源有限的情况下，该领域对具体障碍的关注掩盖了教育工作者现有的变革方法。这些教育工作者的故事很少被放大，尽管他们提供了一个机会来探索改变的替代方法，并理解这些人为影响改变而采取的具体战略行动。考虑到这一点，这个CAREER项目旨在开发课程转换和共同设计干预（例如，研讨会，活动，资源）的替代方法的可见示例，这些方法将由工程教育工作者在他们自己的部门，机构和学科社区中领导和传播。通过检查和使这些替代方法可见，这项工作将与现有的研究补充和协同工作，研究教育变革的障碍，大规模合作变革的努力，以及工程教育教师发展。总的来说，这个CAREER项目的结果将通过阐明影响课程和课程转型的个人、结构和文化支持和障碍来推进知识，这些支持和障碍可以被教师和研究生开发者、管理人员和资助机构使用。该职业奖将利用积极偏差方法，这是一种基于资产和参与性的改变方法。三个阶段的综合研究和教育计划建立在该方法的核心租户之上：认识到工程教育社区中已经存在解决方案，与社区成员合作发现可能的解决方案，以及集中关注资产（而不是障碍和约束）。特别是，研究计划以专业能动性理论为基础，旨在通过探索克服教学惰性的工程教育者的经验和途径，共同构建对如何促进课程变革能动性的理解。在第一阶段，对工程教育工作者的调查将提供对追求课程转型的教师之间区别和统一特征的基本理解。根据本次调查的结果，成功开发了转型课程设计的教育工作者将被招募参加阶段2a，他们在其他环境中面临阻碍变革的障碍（即积极偏差）。阶段2a将侧重于考察三个数据源的多个案例研究（即，深度访谈、课程课程观察和课程变更相关文件）。这些数据源将使用叙事分析方法进行分析，以创建这些教育工作者的深度变化故事（n=12-15）。研究和教育计划将通过对希望从事课程转型工作的工程教育工作者（n=8-12）的协作调查整合到阶段2b中。这种合作调查的结果将是社区对变化故事和教育者主导的传播和传播活动设计的验证。教育者参与者将领导这些活动在他们的学科、部门和机构社区的传播。最后阶段包括教育计划，并将包括项目每年的活动。第三阶段将通过为有关教育变革的课程和讲习班制定一个专业学习框架，使教育工作者能够主导向其社区传播，并通过多种媒介放大积极偏差者的变化故事，从而使变革可见。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。

As a field, engineering education has focused significant effort on overcoming barriers to change, often through solutions requiring high levels of administrative and financial support. While achieving impact, these solutions have the potential to miss the hundreds of departments and institutions that do not have access to these same resources. Further, the field’s focus on specific barriers has overshadowed existing change approaches among educators in resource-limited contexts. The stories of these educators are rarely amplified, even though they present an opportunity to explore alternative approaches to change and understand the specific strategic actions these individuals take to impact change. With that in mind, this CAREER project aims to develop visible examples of alternative approaches to curricular transformation and co-design interventions (e.g., workshops, activities, resources) that will be led and disseminated by engineering educators in their own departmental, institutional, and disciplinary communities. By examining and making visible these alternative approaches, this work will complement and work synergistically with the existing research examining barriers to educational change, large-scale collaborative change efforts, and engineering education faculty development. Overall, the results of this CAREER project will advance knowledge by articulating the individual, structural and cultural supports and barriers for impacting course and curricular transformation that can be used by faculty and graduate student developers, administrators, and funding agencies.This CAREER award will leverage the positive deviance approach, which is an asset-based and participatory approach to change. The three-phase integrated research and education plan builds on the core tenants of the approach: a recognition that solutions already exist within the engineering education community, partnerships with community members to discover possible solutions, and a central focus on assets (as opposed to barriers and constraints). In particular, the research plan is grounded in theories of professional agency and designed to co-construct an understanding of how to foster agency toward curricular change by exploring the experiences and pathways of engineering educators who have overcome pedagogical inertia. In the first phase, a survey of engineering educators will provide a foundational understanding of the distinguishing and unifying characteristics among faculty pursuing curricular transformation. From the results of this survey, educators that have successfully developed transformational curricular designs while facing barriers that have impeded change in other contexts (a.k.a., positive deviants) will be recruited for participation in Phase 2a. Phase 2a will be focused on a multiple case study examining three data sources (i.e., in-depth interviews, observations of course sessions, and curricular-change-related documents). These data sources will be analyzed using narrative analysis methodologies to create in-depth change stories of these educators (n=12-15). The research and education plans will be integrated within Phase 2b through a collaborative inquiry of engineering educators (n=8-12) who want to pursue curricular transformation work. The outcomes of this collaborative inquiry will be community validation of the change stories and educator-led dissemination and propagation activity designs. The educator participants will lead the dissemination of these activities to their disciplinary, departmental, and institutional communities. The final phase captures the education plan and will include activities each year of the project. This third phase will seek to make change visible by developing a professional learning framework for courses and workshops on educational change, enabling educator-led dissemination to their communities, and amplifying the change stories of the positive deviants through multiple mediums.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.