Institutional Transformation through Curriculum and Faculty Development to Serve the Modern Chemistry Student

该项目旨在通过在一所拥有多元化学生群体的公立研究型大学的本科课程中实施循证教学和包容性实践，为国家利益服务。这有助于解决单个课程或教员水平的变化如何不足以推动制度转型的重要问题。这种转变将通过多年的努力来完成，为教师和课程开发提供工作，涉及多个教师，涵盖所有课程，包括一般的讲座和实验室教学，分析化学，无机化学，物理化学和生物化学。教师将使用反思性实践参与课程修订的多次迭代，这些实践将提供表征其修订工作目标结果的数据，然后支持迭代更改。这将包括始终强调结合当前研究和社会问题的例子，使课程能够改进他们如何教学生如何将他们的知识应用于当代问题。这项工作的意义在于，它有可能回答一个重要的问题，即知道如何在机构层面上支持变革，通过多个教员参与课程范围内的工作。该项目以设计为基础的研究方法为基础，应用于教师发展、个人课程和整个部门。课程改革将包括运用贯穿整个课程的大思想，将其与社会和当前研究中的应用、具体的科学实践联系起来，并结合循证教学实践，以支持学生的知识和技能随着时间的推移而增长。教师发展工作包括化学教与学分析、教学规划、教学实践反思和课程开发的合作行动研究调查。对该计划的研究将有助于加深对个别教师和课程变化如何发生以及这如何影响机构转型的理解。这项工作将通过教师和课程开发社区使用的共享工具进行传播；教育文献中关于课程变化的个别报告，以及研究文献中的报告，这些报告促进了对课程和教师发展以及机构层面变化的交叉活动的理解。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 implementing evidenced-based teaching and inclusion practices throughout the undergraduate curriculum at a public research university with a diverse student body. This works to address the important problem of how change at the individual course or faculty level is insufficient to drive institutional transformation. Such transformation will be done through a multi-year effort that provides for faculty and curriculum development work that engages multiple faculty and covers all courses, including lecture and laboratory instruction in general, analytical, inorganic, physical chemistry, and biochemistry. Faculty will engage in multiple iterations of course revision using reflective practices that will provide data that characterizes the targeted outcomes of their revision work and, then, support iterative change. This will include a consistent emphasis on incorporating examples from current research and societal problems, to allow courses to improve how they teach students how to apply their knowledge to contemporary problems. The significance of this work lies in its potential to answer the important problem of knowing how to support change at the institutional level with efforts that engage curriculum-wide work by multiple faculty. The project builds on methods of design-based research, applied at the level of faculty development, individual courses, and throughout the entire department. Curricular reform will include components of the use of big ideas shared throughout the curriculum, linked also to applications in society and current research, specific science practices, and the incorporation of evidence-based instructional practices to support student knowledge and skill growth over time. Faculty development work includes components of analyzing chemistry teaching and learning, planning for instruction, reflecting on instructional practice, and collaborative action research investigation of the curriculum development. The research on the program will contribute to deepening understanding of how individual faculty and course change can occur and how this affects institutional transformation. The work will be disseminated through sharable tools that are used within the faculty and curriculum development community; individual reports in the education literature about course changes, and reports in the research literature that advance understanding of the intersecting activities of curriculum and faculty development and change at the institutional level.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.