Background Incorporating research-based instructional strategies (RBISs) into college classrooms is essential for improving learning outcomes. However, the rate of implementation of new strategies is quite low. The development and dissemination model of introducing faculty to new strategies has shown to be inadequate in encouraging uptake and consistent use of those strategies. This model lacks the ongoing support that has shown to be exceedingly important in the adoption and persistent use of new strategies. In addition, this model ignores the necessity of adaptation of RBISs due to differences in teaching situations including availability of particular resources or different student populations. Faculty online learning communities (FOLCs) are online collaborative faculty groups that provide continued support in order to fill this gap. This case study explores one FOLC member’s adoption of a research-based physical science curriculum as they reflect on their teaching experiences. We operationalize Rodgers’ cycle of reflection to make sense of these changes. Specifically, the study aims to understand how the focal faculty member’s participation in reflection in the context of the FOLC changes over time. Results Analysis via Rodgers’ reflection framework revealed changes in the way Leslie participated in reflection within the context of the FOLC. The faculty participant optimized her teaching practice through iterative cycles of reflection with the FOLC cluster. As a result, she became more satisfied with the curriculum and her implementation over time. Conclusions Faculty encounter challenges when adopting RBISs that must be addressed in real time. Reflection accompanied by ongoing community support via the Next Gen PET FOLC can provide support for changes in practice and increase faculty satisfaction with RBISs. The results contribute to evidence that community building and ongoing support in implementing new curricula is integral to the adaptation process, and FOLCs can provide that support to sustain long-term change.
Emphasizing stoichiometry appears to be a norm of introductory chemistry courses. In this longitudinal and mixed-methods study, we examined how the emphasis on stoichiometry in assessments of introductory chemistry impacted...
This paper explores the intersections of Students as Partners (SaP) and identity development. While identity and sense of belonging are known to be key factors for predicting success and persistence in STEM, less is known about how student partnerships can provide space for students to develop their identities. To explore this space, we focus on the Access Network, a coalition funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of student-run programs that aims to improve equity in the physical sciences. Qualitative interviews with six student participants showed how SaP created opportunities for students to develop social justice physics identities, which allowed them to bridge traditional notions of what it means to be a physicist with their own social justice commitments. This paper contributes to the rapidly growing SaP literature by studying student partnerships at the scale of a national network of institutions, which contrasts studies that focus on more localized contexts, such as teaching and learning in a single classroom.
We present analysis of an exemplary case of rich and extended pedagogical reasoning about energy representations among physics faculty participating in the Next Generation Physical Science and Everyday Thinking Faculty Online Learning Community (FOLC). Our analysis is driven by the question, "What drives and sustains this prolonged and substantive pedagogical discussion?" We argue that this discussion was partially sustained through two factors: (1) the substantive confusion (for students and educators) that it generated and (2) the rich coordination of conceptual resources it involved. Some of this rich coordination of conceptual resources seems enabled by the common curriculum used among the educators in this FOLC. We suggest that these factors create opportunities for faculty to deepen their pedagogical content knowledge and critical reflectiveness.
Graduate education in chemistry typically follows an apprenticeship model, primarily aimed at preparing students for academia; however, the inclusion of teaching within this apprenticeship is not always clear as faculty, students, and other stakeholders do not agree on the need for instructional training. Despite the variability in training, a large majority of chemistry graduate students will be graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) at some point in their education and will hold these positions while conducting research. This discrepancy between hiring graduate students as GTAs and inconsistent inclusion of instructional training indicates a misalignment between the needs of graduate students and the support programs offer. This multiple case study using a sociocultural perspective focuses on chemistry graduate student identity development as researchers and teachers to understand how chemistry graduate students make sense of their roles and intersections of those roles in the context of a first-semester training course which integrates content related to research and teaching. The course incorporates GTA training best practices from the literature and course components designed to support identity development. Qualitative data in the form of interviews were the main sources for analysis. A priori and inductive coding using Thematic Analysis methods revealed patterns in how chemistry graduate students develop as teachers and researchers and how those identities intersect. The results of this study demonstrate the importance of explicitly discussing how and why teaching is relevant in chemistry graduate student education more broadly and that student agency in the structure of such courses is useful for graduate student professional development in chemistry.
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