Exploring STEM postsecondary instructors’ accounts of instructional planning and revisions

Abstract

Background: Local and national initiatives to improve the learning experiences of students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses have been ongoing for a couple of decades with a heightened momentum within the last 10 years. However, recent large-scale studies have demonstrated that transmission of information is still the primary mode of instruction in STEM courses across the undergraduate curriculum. The limited impact of instructional change reform efforts can be partly explained by the one-sided focus of educational research on the development of evidence-based instructional practices and production of evidence demonstrating their impact on student learning. This has been done at the expense of understanding faculty members' instructional practices and mindsets about teaching and learning that underlie their practices. This study addresses this gap in the literature by characterizing STEM instructors' instructional intentions and reflections on their teaching performance for a week of instruction. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 42 STEM faculty members from one doctorate-granting institution in the USA. Results: STEM instructors in this study had teacher-centric mindsets with respect to their instructional planning (e.g., content-focused learning goals, lecture is seen as an engagement strategy). We found that these instructors mostly saw formative assessment tools as engagement strategy rather than tools to monitor student learning. Reflections on their level of satisfaction with their week of teaching focused heavily on content coverage and personal feelings and minimally considered student learning. Finally, we found that pedagogical discontent was not a driver of planned course revisions. Conclusions: This study identifies mismatches between STEM instructors' teaching mindsets and current approaches to instructional change. STEM instructors in this study paid minimal attention to student learning when considering course-level revisions and many of their reflections were anchored in their personal feelings. However, instructional reform strategies often attempt to convince faculty of a new approach by demonstrating its impact on student learning. The misalignment identified in this study further highlights the need to better characterize STEM instructors' cognition around teaching so that reform efforts can better meet them where they are.

Faculty perspectives regarding the integration of systems thinking into chemistry education

“…Research suggests that previous attempts at reforming science education have been unsuccessful because they exercised a topdown model of change and were not systemic in nature (Fullan and Miles, 1992;Anderson and Mitchener, 1994;Bybee and DeBoer, 1994). Common themes arising in unsuccessful attempts include politics (Fullan and Miles, 1992), lack of clarity for curriculum changes, lack of support (Handal and Herrington, 2003), lack of funding (Foote et al, 2016), lack of time (Dancy and Henderson, 2010), and discrepancies between STEM instructors' attitudes and current approaches to reform (Erdmann et al, 2020).…”

“…It is also suggested that any changes to education will only be successful if the opinions and attitudes of the instructors are considered (Trigwell et al, 1994;Ahmad, 2008;Burmeister et al, 2013;Erdmann et al, 2020). Therefore, before attempting to implement systems thinking into the general chemistry curriculum, it would be beneficial to gain a greater awareness of the perceptions and opinions of chemistry instructors in this regard.…”

Titrating Teaching: An Interdisciplinary Case Study of Online and Face-to-Face Undergraduate Biochemistry Instruction†

“…Pointedly, it appears from the literature that this type of systematic study of science instruction in higher education has been limited. Indeed, recent studies highlight the “critical need to investigate STEM faculty’s instructional decision and value system and to incorporate these findings into instructional reform efforts” ( 8 , 13 ).…”

“…Engaging in an interdisciplinary reflective investigation of one science educator's efforts across two distinct instructional modalities holds promise for multiple reasons. First, given that few STEM faculty begin teaching at the university level with any formal pedagogical training (7)(8)(9), working with an education researcher could provide insights into key instructional components, and an interdisciplinary collaboration from the perspectives of biochemistry and education faculty, respectively, would likely yield more than the efforts of a lone researcher (10). Second, this case study addresses recent calls for educators to reflect upon and examine their teaching practices (specifically, content delivery, student interaction, and assessments) to better support student engagement in science (11).…”

Implementation of Modeling Tools for Teaching Biorefinery (Focused on Bioethanol Production) in Biochemical Engineering Courses: Dynamic Modeling of Batch, Semi-Batch, and Continuous Well-Stirred Bioreactors

“…In this context, when planning biochemical engineering courses, new methodologies have to be included in the course programs to close the gap between developers' vision and the real-life application in STEM students [13]. Educational institutions usually rely on laboratory practices to build successful students.…”