Ethnography of Collaborative College Teaching

小行星9604981 该项目将记录跨学科数学和科学课程在本科阶段协同创建和教学的过程。达特茅斯学院现在开始了为期五年的第二年，NSF资助的“数学课程”项目，涉及50名教师在创建超过20个新的和修订的课程。以这样或那样的方式，所有涉及数学的应用，其传统的学术领域以外的问题;几乎所有涉及的教师团队在设计和教学过程中的合作。 尽管教育研究表明，跨学科整合内容可以提高材料的保留和转移，并提高高阶思维技能，但关于如何在大学一级最好地完成这一点的信息却很少。本研究旨在为高校教师提供信息，帮助他们进行协作，跨学科教学，并做好这一点。调查提出了四个问题：合作的教授如何面对两个主要的挑战，使整合数学似乎特别成问题：协调数学序列与其他学科和减轻学生对数学的恐惧？ 合作开发和教授跨学科课程的过程从开始到结束是一种智力和社会学体验？ _各种协作策略如何与学生成果联系起来？ - -教授们自己如何描述自己的经历？ 研究“三角”数据来自教师访谈，人种学观察。和学生访谈和记录来回答这些问题。在规划和教授每门跨学科课程之前和之后，将分别与每位教授进行半结构化面试。这些记录的访谈将探讨他们的经验，动机和目标，在教学这些课程和他们的评估结果为自己和他们的学生。人种学者还将观察和记录规划会议和其他小组会议。这些数据应产生实用的信息，在整合数学内容，在与其他学科的同事，在解决学生的反应，新的教学法，并在既定的机构组织内工作遇到的特殊问题。访谈还将阐明发起这种改革的主观经验。 有关学生在这些课程中学习的数据（可从预测试和后测试，学生访谈，并在已经资助的评估MATC项目收集的学术记录）将链接到教师访谈的信息和每个MATC课程每周课堂观察的结果。这些联系将被探讨得出结论，什么教学方法似乎最有效地改善数学和科学学习。 管理人员和大学教师以外的MATC也将接受采访，以文件的文化环境，其中发生的数学教学改革。本研究借由探讨校外学生对数学与科学的态度，并分析学校的组织架构，探讨大学文化对跨学科、合作教学的意涵，以及跨学科、合作教学对大学文化的影响。 因此，这个项目将提供教授需要的两种信息：（1）关于遇到的问题和设计的解决方案的实用信息;（2）“经验感”，即跨学科教学在个人和智力方面所涉及的预览。对大学文化的考察--侧重于对数学的信仰体系和制度组织--通过将数学改革置于背景中并确定抑制或促进改革努力的因素，在另一个层面上解决了改革问题。这项研究的结果将广泛发表在数学和教育期刊上，通过在会议，研讨会和研究所的演讲，并以简短，可读的“操作”手册的形式伴随着MATC课程的平装本。

9604981 Wallace This project will document the process by which interdisciplinary mathematics and science courses are collaboratively created and taught at the undergraduate level. Dartmouth College is now beginning the second year of a five-year, NSF-funded "Mathematics Across the Curriculum" project which involves fifty faculty in the creation of over twenty new and revised courses. In one way or another, all involve the application of mathematics to problems outside its traditional academic domain; almost all involve the collaboration of a team of faculty in the design and teaching of the course. Although educational research suggests that integrating content across disciplines enhances retention and transfer of material and improves higher-order thinking skills, little information is available about how this is best accomplished at the college level. This study aims to give college faculty information that will help them do collaborative, interdisciplinary teaching and do it well. The investigation poses four questions: _How do collaborating professors face two major challenges that make integrating mathematics seem especially problematic: coordinating mathematical sequences with those of other subjects and allaying students' apprehensions about mathematics? _What does the process of collaboratively developing and teaching an interdisciplinary course look like as an intellectual and sociological experience, from beginning to end? _ How are various collaborative strategies linked with student outcomes? _ How do professors themselves characterize their experience? The research "triangulates" data from faculty interviews, ethnographic observation. and student interviews and records to answer these questions. A semi-structured interview will be conducted with each professor individually before and after the planning and teaching of each interdisciplinary course. These recorded interviews will explore their experiences, motivations, and goals in teaching these courses and their assessme nts of the results for themselves and their students. The ethnographer will also observe and take notes on planning sessions and other group meetings. These data should yield practical information about special issues encountered in integrating mathematics content, in working with colleagues from other disciplines, in addressing student responses to novel pedagogy, and in working within the established institutional organization. The interviews will also illuminate the subjective experiences of initiating this kind of reform. Data about student learning in these courses (available from pre- and post-tests, student interviews, and academic records collected in the already-funded evaluation of the MATC project) will be linked to information from faculty interviews and to results of weekly classroom observations of each MATC course. These linkages will be explored to draw conclusions about what pedagogical approaches seem most effective in improving mathematics and science learning. Administrators and college faculty outside the MATC will also be interviewed to document the cultural milieu within which reform of mathematics teaching takes place. By probing attitudes about mathematics and science of those outside its precincts and analyzing institutional organization, this study will explore the implications of college culture for interdisciplinary, collaborative teaching, and vice versa. This project thus will provide two kinds of information professors need: (1) practical information about problems encountered and solutions devised and (2) a "sense of the experience," a preview of what interdisciplinary teaching involves in personal as well as intellectual terms. The examination of university culture_focusing on the belief system about mathematics and on the institutional organization_addpesses reform issues on another level by placing mathematics reform in context and identifying factors that inhibit or promote reform efforts. The results of this research will be published widely in journal ar ticles in mathematics and education journals, through presentations at meetings, workshops and institutes, and in the form of a short, readable "how-to" manual to accompany the shelf of paperbacks produced from MATC courses.