Collaborative Research: Characterizing the emerging field of departmental change and empowering an inclusive network of practitioners

本项目旨在通过促进对高等教育机构院系在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）本科教育转型中的核心作用的理解，为国家利益服务。基于基于团队的制度变革模型，IUSE: EDU Track 2 - institutional and Community Transformation Level 1项目调查了成功的部门变革努力，以确定支持制度化和可持续性的有效策略和要素。这项研究和开发工作是由来自国立路易斯大学、科罗拉多大学博尔德分校、科罗拉多州立大学和西密歇根大学的STEM从业者和研究人员进行的。该项目建立了一个由STEM教师、机构管理人员、员工和教育研究人员组成的结构化网络，验证了一个假设，即之前专注于个体从业者、研究人员或课程的努力在很大程度上是无效的。项目团队认为，以部门为变革引擎的基于团队的变革模型和行动有可能建立和维持本科STEM教育的教与学转型。项目团队提出了一个双管齐下的项目：(1)对本科STEM教育部门变革项目进行景观研究，调查他们支持变革的方法；(2)催化一个包容性的社区网络，分享研究结果和建议的做法。该项目的目标是描述(1)STEM部门变革项目的结构、方法和理论框架，以及(2)联网部门变革推动者的影响。复杂和混合方法的研究和开发项目由一种系统方法指导，该系统方法(a)由组织学习框架提供信息，(B)集成了批判理论和公平/社会正义方法，以更好地推进跨多种类型的学生群体和高等教育机构的部门转型知识，这些学生群体和高等教育机构遍布全国的高等教育企业。在一系列研究问题的框架下，团队检查数据和信息的语料库，这些语料库包括对文献/现有资源的系统回顾，以及描述部门变革努力的档案，对关键项目负责人的访谈，以及对参与者的调查/访谈/观察。数据分析将通过演绎和归纳跨案例方法来分析定性数据和基于文本的信息，从而产生部分有序的元矩阵和堆叠案例方法来支持聚类和压缩案例。该项目的变化理论和系统方法与正在研究的现象和问题的复杂性很好地结合在一起。NSF IUSE: EDU项目支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型轨道，该项目支持高等教育机构和学科社区的STEM教育转型和改善工作。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by advancing understanding of the central role that departments in higher education institutions play in the transformation of undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Based on team-based models of institutional change, this IUSE: EDU Track 2 - Institutional and Community Transformation Level 1 project investigates successful departmental change efforts to identify effective strategies and elements that support institutionalization and sustainability. This research and development effort is being conducted by STEM practitioners and researchers from the National-Louis University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado State University, and Western Michigan University. Establishing a structured network of STEM instructors, institutional administrators, staff, and education researchers, the project tests the hypothesis that prior efforts that focused on individual practitioners, researchers, or courses were largely ineffective. The project team posits that team-based change models and actions that focus on the department as the engine of change have the potential to establish and sustain the transformation of teaching and learning in undergraduate STEM education. The project team proposes a two-pronged project: (1) A landscape study focusing on undergraduate STEM education departmental change projects that investigates their methods for supporting change and (2) catalyzing an inclusive community network for sharing findings and recommended practices. The goals of the project are to describe (1) the structures, approaches, and theoretical frameworks of STEM departmental change projects and (2) the impacts of networking departmental change agents. The complex and mixed methods research and development project is guided by a systems approach that (a) is informed by an organizational learning framework and that (B) integrates a critical theory and equity/social justice approach to better advance knowledge on departmental transformation across the many types of student populations and institutions of higher education that populate the post-secondary education enterprise of the Nation. Framed by a set of research questions, the team examines a corpus of data and information that consist of a systematic review of the literature/existing resources, and an archive depicting departmental change efforts, interviews with key project leaders, and surveys/interviews/observation of participants. Data analyses will be guided by deductive and inductive cross-case approaches to analyzing qualitative data and text-based information resulting in a partially ordered meta-matrix and a stacking cases approach to support clustering and condensing cases. The project’s theory of change and systems approach are well-aligned with the phenomena under study and the complexity of the problem. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the project 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.