Distinct factors predict use of active learning techniques by pre-tenure and tenured STEM faculty

Progression from the mean: Cultivating instructors' unique trajectories of practice using educational technology

“…Each instructor has a unique trajectory of practice that emerges based on their personal history across contexts (Flores, 2006; Holland & Lave, 2001) and the particularities of the current context in which they interact (Brody & Hadar, 2015). This framing is consistent with findings in the literature that an instructor's experiences with student‐centered pedagogies as a learner (Apkarian et al, 2021) or their participation during graduate school in programs aimed at developing pedagogical understanding (Indorf et al, 2021) can influence their practices and pedagogical reasoning as a faculty member. Further, instructors' progress along their unique trajectories can be iterative and nonlinear (Miller et al, 2021; Pilitsis & Duncan, 2012).…”

“…It is widely reported that instructors and students do not make full use of educational technologies (Graves & Bowers, 2018;Selwyn, 2013;Spector, 2001); many instructors also resist using student-centered pedagogies (Tharayil et al, 2018). Often, this reluctance is conceived of in terms of barriers to adoption, both technological, for example, hardware, software, training, and support, (Butler & Sellbom, 2002;Deacon et al, 2023), and curricular, for example, time, content coverage, accreditation requirements, and class size (Apkarian et al, 2021;Indorf et al, 2021;Michael, 2007). Instructor beliefs about technology (Ertmer, 1999;Ertmer et al, 2012;Vongkulluksn et al, 2020) and pedagogy (Moore et al, 2015;Pilitsis & Duncan, 2012) provide another lens that researchers commonly use to explain reluctance.…”

“…In this study, we also focus on how community supports productive iterations along an instructor's trajectory during tool uptake. Formal and informal interactions with one another enable instructors to use peers' experiences and perspectives to add to their teaching repertoire and can catalyze progress in their practice (Beach & Cox, 2009; Indorf et al, 2021; Kezar et al, 2017). By hearing stories of how others negotiate a new instructional practice within that instructor's particular context, instructors can evaluate the fit for their own class, including possible modification (Thompson et al, 2013).…”

“…Alternatively, we frame this issue in terms of practices , where practices are regularities in activity given meaning by and adapted to the contexts of their use (Forman, 2018; Koretsky et al, 2023; Wenger, 1998). In this section, we elaborate our practice‐based construct for the evolving ways and varying degrees to which instructors utilize educational technology (Graves & Bowers, 2018) and student‐centered pedagogical practices (Dancy et al, 2016; Indorf et al, 2021) and how these change over time—their trajectories of practice .…”

“…The use of educational technology to support student‐centered instruction has become common in university‐level engineering programs (Huang et al, 2019; Koretsky & Magana, 2019; Woolf, 2010). Researchers often evaluate the uptake of educational technology in terms of a simple binary, where success is measured by the proportion of adopters using the technology, often in a preconceived way (Chan et al, 2016; Indorf et al, 2021; Lattuca et al, 2014). These researchers evaluate fidelity of implementation (Borrego et al, 2013; O'Donnell, 2008), that is, the degree to which an instructor's use aligns with the designer's intent as the innovation diffuses into the community (Rogers, 2003).…”