Stirring the Pot: Supporting and Challenging General Education Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty to Change Teaching and Assessment Practice

Stieha, Vicki; Shadle, Susan E.; Paterson, Sharon

doi:10.5325/jgeneeduc.65.2.0085

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The development of FIBIS seeks to address this gap in the literature. Several studies have examined barriers at the same institution across departments (e.g., Austin, 2011, Borrego, Froyd & Hall, 2010Lund & Stains, 2015;Shadle et al, 2017;Stieha, Shadle, & Paterson, 2016) and have found that they vary-the implication being that each environment is unique and must be understood before effective reform efforts can move forward. In particular, Lund and Stains (2015) found that the physics faculty at their university possessed primarily student-centered views of teaching and viewed contextual influences positively, while the chemistry faculty had the most teacher-centered views and viewed contextual influences as barriers to the adoption of EBIPs; biology faculty fell in between.…”

Section: Barriers To Implementing Ebipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The STEM Faculty Instructional Barriers and Identity Survey (FIBIS): development and exploratory results

Sturtevant

Wheeler

2019

IJ STEM Ed

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Background: As institutions and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments emphasize faculty use of evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs), various barriers and faculty perceptions hinder that process. While a large body of literature exists in this area, no survey instrument has been developed to comprehensively and systematically capture all these factors. We developed and piloted a survey instrument, the Faculty Instructional Barriers and Identity Survey (FIBIS), to delineate university STEM faculty perceptions of barriers to using EBIPs and examine the composition and sources of faculty professional identity, use of and dissatisfaction with these practices. Results: Initial pilot study results with a small, targeted sample (n = 69) shows how FIBIS can be used to understand factors that impact instructional practices. For our sample, we found that higher perceived departmental barriers and limited supports correlate with lower work identity. Even at a research university, we do not see a negative correlation between research and teaching identities; STEM faculty can have both, despite hypothesized tensions in the literature. We also found that sense of belonging and faculty community were descriptively higher for underrepresented minority than non-underrepresented minority faculty. As previous work has suggested, use of EBIPs varied by department. Finally, descriptive differences were seen in faculty barriers for those who were and were not satisfied with EBIPs. This suggests another layer to add to models of faculty decision-making regarding the use of EBIPs: dissatisfaction with implementing these practices once they are attempted. Further work is needed to confirm and understand these initial findings. Conclusions: Many of the exploratory findings from our pilot of FIBIS align with previous qualitative work, suggesting that FIBIS is a tool that can capture faculty identity, use of EBIPs, and barriers to instruction. While we do not intend to generalize our claims, the following suggestions for our institution may demonstrate how FIBIS can be used to try and reduce STEM faculty barriers to implementing EBIPs: (1) developing a strong teaching community (especially needed for persistence of faculty from underrepresented minorities), (2) helping faculty connect to the university as a whole, and (3) working with departments to better support implementation of EBIPs. The results presented and implications of these findings demonstrate the potential of FIBIS as a tool for examining factors that influence STEM faculty instructional practice. Future work includes further validating the FIBIS barriers component of the survey so that FIBIS can be used to identify and support change in institutions of higher education.

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Section: Barriers To Implementing Ebipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The STEM Faculty Instructional Barriers and Identity Survey (FIBIS): development and exploratory results

Sturtevant

Wheeler

2019

IJ STEM Ed

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“…The project began with a group of campus leaders brainstorming a set of behaviors we would expect to observe if STEM teaching norms were to shift from teacher centered to student centered (Kember 1997; Trigwell and Prosser 2004; Weimer 2002). Certainly, some faculty were already using student-centered approaches, but at the time of this study, teacher-centered approaches were decidedly the norm (Stieha et al 2016). To move toward the vision, faculty conceptions about teaching and learning, the assumptions they make around how teaching and learning works, and what teaching looks like may need to change (Czajka and McConnell 2016; Kember 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faculty drivers and barriers: laying the groundwork for undergraduate STEM education reform in academic departments

2017

Self Cite

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BackgroundCalls to improve student learning and increase the number of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) college and university graduates assert the need for widespread adoption of evidence-based instructional practices in undergraduate STEM courses. For successful reforms to take hold and endure, it is likely that a significant shift in culture around teaching is needed. This study seeks to describe the initial response of faculty to an effort to shift teaching norms, with a long-term goal of altering the culture around teaching and learning in STEM. While the effort was envisioned and led at the institutional level, dialog about the proposed change and actions taken by faculty was emergent and supported within departments.ResultsFaculty identify a variety of barriers to proposed changes in teaching practice; however, faculty also identify a variety of drivers that might help the institution alter teaching and learning norms. Analysis of faculty responses reveals 18 categories of barriers and 15 categories of drivers in faculty responses. Many of the barrier and driver categories were present in each department’s responses; however, the distribution and frequency with which they appear reveals departmental differences that are important for moving forward with strategies to change teaching practice.ConclusionsAddressing faculty’s barriers to change is essential, but identifying and leveraging faculty’s drivers for the change is potentially equally important in efforts to catalyze changes that are supported or constrained by the local context. Further, the collection of faculty perspectives opens a dialog around the current and future state of teaching, an important step in laying the groundwork for change. Departmental differences in barriers and drivers make clear the importance of “knowing” the local contexts so strategies adopted by departments can be appropriately tailored. Results are discussed in light of what kind of strategies might be employed to effect changes in STEM education.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40594-017-0062-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…This lack of knowledge transfer made it necessary to reteach basic statistical concepts in the research course, which took time away from advancing students' research knowledge and skills. To address these issues, our department initiated a project focused on two goals: (a) increasing students' under-standing of statistical concepts in the introductory statistics course, and (b) providing a specific bridge or cognitive structure that would connect the two courses and support a greater transfer of learning between them (Stieha, Shadle, & Paterson, 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing student learning and knowledge transfer using principles of team-based learning and bridge assignments in large introductory statistics classes.

Campbell¹,

Taylor²

2020

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology

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Undergraduate psychology students enrolled in an introductory statistics course often experience difficulty due to math anxiety, insufficient preparation, and large impersonal classes, all of which threaten their ability to pass the course and acquire the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in the subsequent research methods class. This research compared the performance of 296 students taking an introductory statistics course that incorporated team-based learning (TBL) and other evidence-based instructional practices with that of 153 students taking other sections of the same course without these modifications. We assessed students' learning experience, statistical knowledge performance, and transfer of learning to a later research methods course using both quantitative and qualitative data. Data included students' experience in the TBL statistics course, their final grades, and the results of a Pre-Semester Knowledge Assessment completed at the beginning of the research methods course. Students who took introductory statistics with TBL and connecting bridge assignments demonstrated better performance in statistics, t(447) ϭ 2.19, p ϭ .03, Cohen's d ϭ 0.22, and a higher transfer of learning in the research methods course, t(112) ϭ 2.50, p ϭ .01, Cohen's d ϭ 0.48, than students who took the course using standard methods. Although these results were modest, students in the TBL course also identified TBL activities as having a positive effect on their learning. Based on these results, we encourage educators to consider employing the methods identified in this study in their teaching of introductory statistics and research methods.

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Stirring the Pot: Supporting and Challenging General Education Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty to Change Teaching and Assessment Practice

Cited by 7 publications

References 41 publications

The STEM Faculty Instructional Barriers and Identity Survey (FIBIS): development and exploratory results

The STEM Faculty Instructional Barriers and Identity Survey (FIBIS): development and exploratory results

Faculty drivers and barriers: laying the groundwork for undergraduate STEM education reform in academic departments

Assessing student learning and knowledge transfer using principles of team-based learning and bridge assignments in large introductory statistics classes.

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