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，通常通过需要高水平行政和财政支持的解决方案。虽然这些解决方案产生了影响，但有可能错过数百个无法获得这些资源的部门和机构。此外，实地对具体障碍的关注使教育工作者在资源有限的情况下采取的现有变革办法黯然失色。这些教育工作者的故事很少被放大，即使他们提供了一个机会，探索替代方法来改变和了解这些人采取的具体战略行动，以影响变化。考虑到这一点，这个CAREER项目旨在开发课程改革和共同设计干预措施的替代方法的可见例子（例如，讲习班，活动，资源），将由工程教育工作者在自己的部门，机构和学科社区领导和传播。通过研究和使这些替代方法可见，这项工作将补充和协同工作，与现有的研究检查障碍，教育变革，大规模的合作变革的努力，工程教育教师的发展。总的来说，这个职业生涯项目的结果将通过阐明个人，结构和文化的支持和障碍，影响课程和课程改革，可用于教师和研究生开发人员，管理人员和资助机构推进知识。这个职业生涯奖将利用积极的偏差方法，这是一个基于资产和参与性的方法来改变。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的基础上：认识到解决方案已经存在于工程教育界，与社区成员建立伙伴关系以发现可能的解决方案，以及集中关注资产（而不是障碍和限制）。特别是，研究计划是基于专业机构的理论，旨在共同构建如何通过探索工程教育工作者谁克服了教学惯性的经验和途径，促进机构对课程改革的理解。在第一阶段，工程教育工作者的调查将提供一个基本的理解教师之间追求课程改革的区别和统一的特点。从这项调查的结果来看，那些成功开发了转型课程设计，同时又面临着阻碍其他环境变化的障碍的教育工作者（又称，积极的偏离者）将被招募参与阶段2a。第2a阶段将侧重于一项多案例研究，检查三个数据源（即，深入访谈、课程观察和与课程变化相关的文件）。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（n=12-15）的深入变化的故事。研究和教育计划将通过工程教育工作者（n=8-12）谁想要追求课程改造工作的合作调查整合在第2b阶段。这一合作调查的结果将是社区对变革故事和教育者主导的传播和宣传活动设计的验证。教育工作者参与者将领导这些活动的传播到他们的学科，部门和机构社区。最后阶段是教育计划，包括项目每年的活动。第三阶段将通过为教育变革的课程和研讨会开发专业的学习框架，使教育者主导的传播到他们的社区，并通过多种媒体放大积极偏离者的变革故事，寻求使变革可见。该奖项反映了NSF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.