As calls for pedagogical transformation of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction intensify, the pace of change remains slow. The literature shows that research-based instructional strategies transfer only sporadically into STEM instructional practice. Difficulties associated with implementation and sustainment of instructional change may appear daunting-if not insurmountable-to many STEM change agents and teaching faculty. Subsequently, the path towards systematic and lasting pedagogical transformation in post-secondary STEM stands largely uncharted.To understand how challenges faced by STEM educators engaged in pedagogical change may be overcome, this paper uses qualitative inquiry to explore an emergent process of teacher change. The change process took place during implementation of an online innovation within an undergraduate engineering calculus course taught via synchronous broadcast at a mid-size, Western, public university. The instructional innovation required first year calculus students to participate in an asynchronous, online discussion forum for graded credit. Data, consisting of written reflections and transcribed interviews, were gathered from three STEM faculty members who each played a different role in the change process: a mathematics instructor implementing the online forum within his course; an engineering faculty peer-mentor assisting with the implementation of the online forum; and a STEM education faculty member evaluating the implementation and observing the process of change. Situated within the interpretive research paradigm, this study uses exploratory thematic analysis of narrative data to understand the ways in which contextual factors may influence pedagogical change. Introduction Amid increasing calls for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pedagogical transformation 1, 24 and growing concerns over the lack of transfer of research-based instructional strategies to STEM 23, 24 classrooms, several scholars 2,3,12 advocate for a deeper understanding of instructional change within STEM disciplines. Henderson et al. 12 summarized the situation saying, "the state of change strategies and the study of changes strategies are weak and …research communities that study and enact change are largely isolated from one-another" (p. 1). Borrego and Henderson 3 suggested that efforts toward pedagogical change in STEM remain unsystematic and that STEM fields have not, as yet, developed an understanding of how and when to implement the variety of change approaches now documented within the research literature (pp. 222-223). Therefore, the current state of the instructional change literature in STEM indicates a need for more exploratory work and provides impetus for this study.
Background to the Study
In early January of 1749 John Wesley canceled a previously scheduled trip to Rotterdam in order to write a seventy-nine-page open letter to the Reverend Dr. Conyers Middleton on the subject of miracles in the early, post-apostolic church. The letter is one of Wesley's longest original writings, but it has never been studied critically. In it, Wesley's relationship to intellectual currents of his age become particularly clear, both because of the subject with which it is concerned (God's intervention in history) and because of the interlocutor to whom it is addressed (Conyers Middleton of Cambridge University).
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