Research on university faculty members’ reasoning about how departments change

Abstract

Research on institutional change says that effective change agents are able to flexibly reason with multiple perspectives on change, depending on their local context and their goals. However, little is known about what this flexible reasoning looks like. In this exploratory work, we conducted and analyzed interviews in which faculty discussed departmental change. This work is part of an ongoing study to understand how to support departmental change through Departmental Action Teams (DATs). Our preliminary analyses suggest that faculty have multiple context-dependent ways to reason about change. This work will lead to a better understanding of how productive lines of reasoning can be leveraged in faculty communities that are trying to create change.

Introducing the Departmental Action Leadership Institute and its preliminary outcomes

“…The change leaders are the departments' representatives in DALI; they participate in all DALI activities and are responsible for leading the change effort in their departments. These change efforts are based on the Departmental Action Team (DAT) model, which has been written about extensively elsewhere [19][20][21][22][23][24]. Each department forms a DAT that is facilitated by the change leaders and that consists of faculty members, staff, students, and other stakeholders relevant to the undergraduate physics program (e.g., alums, advisors).…”