Collaborative Research: Academic Change and the RED Community of Practice: Sustaining a Revolution Through Change Leadership and Research

尽管人们一再呼吁改善科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）专业本科生的教育方式，但改革进展缓慢，这是该项目重要性的基础。尽管已经提供了多年的资金和发展来帮助改进，但STEM教育的变化并不普遍。传统、文化、结构和决策模式将高等教育与其他组织设置区分开来，并为创造系统和可持续的变化引入了独特的挑战。这个项目将为试图通过革命性工程部门（RED）授予机制进行变革的变革领导者团队提供基于研究的实际支持。该项目将向为RED项目服务的教师、研究生和工作人员介绍启动、实施和维持校园学术变革所必需的知识和基于研究的技能，建立和支持RED团队联盟，并研究学术变革的过程。该项目的目标是通过提供专业发展、实践社区和基于研究的信息，帮助变革领导者在知识、技能和资源方面成长，从而使学术变革能够成功实施和持续。该项目团队，革命性的工程部门参与式行动研究（REDPAR），代表了罗斯-霍尔曼理工学院的学术变革团队与华盛顿大学STEM公平评估与研究中心（CERSE）之间独特的实践研究合作伙伴关系。这种伙伴关系将使REDPAR能够将注重学术变革的实用、应用型教师发展与识别RED项目中出现的重要变革实践的研究联系起来。该项目的成果将通过夏季教师发展研讨会和RED联盟年会上完成。教师将通过双月的RED联盟电话进一步支持，这将成为RED实践社区分享经验和建议并确定合作机会的机会。REDPAR将为新的RED团队匹配能够提供实用建议的导师（来自更有经验的RED团队）。研究团队将使用RED授权的焦点小组和访谈数据来定性地检查1)组织环境对团队的影响以及他们能够实现的目标，以及2)持续项目的各个方面，以及制度学习机制，组织变革模型/理论和环境在项目制度化中发挥的作用。该项目将与当前和以前的RED受助人合作，以确保这项工作对STEM教育变革社区有用。随着RED中社区学院的加入，该项目以及该领域将深入了解背景在更广泛的高等教育生态系统中的作用。本项目的研究结果将提高我们对高等教育中制度化的系统性变化的理解，以及组织环境如何影响学术变革倡议的成功和可持续性。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。

The slow progress for change despite repeated calls for improving the way undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are educated is the basis for this project’s importance. Although many years of funding and development have been provided to help make improvements, change in STEM education is not pervasive. Tradition, culture, structure, and decision-making patterns set higher education apart from other organizational settings and introduce unique challenges for creating systemic and sustainable changes. This project will enable the creation of research-based practical support for teams of change leaders trying to make change through the Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant mechanism. The project will introduce faculty, graduate students, and staff serving on RED projects to knowledge and research-based skills that are necessary to initiate, implement, and sustain academic change on their campuses, build and support a consortium of RED teams, and study the process of academic change. The goals of the project are to help change leaders grow in knowledge, skills, and resources by providing professional development, a community of practice and research-based information, so that academic change can be successfully implemented and sustained. The project team, Revolutionizing Engineering Departments Participatory Action Research (REDPAR), represents a unique practice-research partnership between the Making Academic Change Happen team at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and the Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (CERSE) at the University of Washington. This partnership will enable REDPAR to link practical, applied faculty development focused on making academic change with research that identifies important change practices that emerge in RED projects. The outcomes of the project will be accomplished through summer faculty development workshops and during the RED Consortium Annual Meeting. The faculty will be further supported through bi-monthly RED Consortium calls which serve as opportunities for the RED Community of Practice to share experiences and advice, and identify opportunities for collaboration. REDPAR will match new RED teams with mentors (from more experienced RED cohorts) who can provide practical advice. The research team will use RED grantee focus groups and interview data to qualitatively examine 1) how organizational context matters for teams and what they have been able to achieve, and 2) the aspects of projects that have been sustained, and the role that institutional learning mechanisms, organizational change models/theories, and context play in project institutionalization. This project will partner with current and former RED grantees to ensure that the work is useful to the STEM education changemaking community. With the addition of the community colleges in RED, the project and therefore the field will gain insights into the role of context in the wider ecosystem of higher education. The findings from this project will improve our understanding of institutionalizing systemic changes in higher education, and how organizational contexts impact the success and sustainability of academic change initiatives.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.