Abstract
Although decades of research have identified effective instructional practices for improving student learning in college and university courses, these practices are not widely implemented. Scholars in several distinct fields are interested in promoting these practices and have engaged in research on pedagogical change. This chapter presents the initial results of a comprehensive literature review. The authors undertook an examination of 130 randomly chosen journal articles from a set of 295 that were identified as addressing change in the instructional practices of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Based on this literature review, four core categories of strategies for change were identified: disseminating curriculum and pedagogy, developing reflective teachers, developing policy, and developing shared visions. The use of particular types of strategies for change differs by field in important ways and has implications for the success of the effort to bring about a change. Common weaknesses in the body of literature are also identified; these include a lack of connection to other literature on the topic of change and a lack of presented data to support claims of success or failure with respect to the strategies for change.
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Notes
- 1.
By using the phrase “efforts by change agents,” we intend to exclude all articles related to descriptions of new teaching ideas developed by instructors with no emphasis on the dissemination of these ideas. There has been much work published in this area and descriptions of “best practices” are widely available. We wish to determine, in part, how this work can be used to impact teaching practices beyond the developers.
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This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL 0723699 and SES 0623009.
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Appendix: Coding Sheet for Preliminary Analysis
Appendix: Coding Sheet for Preliminary Analysis
Category | Codes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Discipline (which disciplinary audience is being spoken to, as defined by the journal) | HER | |||||
FDR | ||||||
SER – biology, chemistry, engineering, geosciences, math, physics, technology | ||||||
Other | ||||||
Author affiliation | HER | |||||
FDR | ||||||
SER – biology, chemistry, engineering, geosciences, math, physics, technology | ||||||
Other | ||||||
Primary stated purpose of article (If article is review or other, skip to significant findings/claims) | Generative theory development (development of new ideas, concepts, theories) | |||||
Convergent theory development (examination, revision and/or testing of ideas, concepts, theories) | ||||||
Descriptive – mainly describes an activity or situation | ||||||
Review | ||||||
Other | ||||||
Change intervention details | ||||||
Source of change intervention details | Specific intervention studied | |||||
Aspects of change intervention(s) inferred | ||||||
Unit of change intervention (individual to environment) | Individual or groups of individuals | |||||
Department (or subgroup of department) | ||||||
Institution | ||||||
Extra-institutional | ||||||
Change agency (refers to the unit of change above) | Internal | External – voluntary | External – voluntary | |||
Objective of change intervention (refers to unit of change above) | Observable actions | |||||
Ways of thinking | ||||||
Directedness of objective (refers to unit of change above) | Prescribed (directed) | |||||
Emergent | ||||||
Duration of intervention | One-time short: 1 day or less | |||||
One-time long: between 1 and 6 days | ||||||
Ongoing: longer than 6 days | ||||||
Research approach | ||||||
Design | Naturalistic | |||||
Experimental/quasi-experimental | ||||||
Nonempirical (no data collected) | ||||||
Methodology | Qualitative | |||||
Quantitative | ||||||
Mixed-methods (both qualitative and quantitative) | ||||||
Sample size | One number | |||||
Unit of sample | Individual | |||||
Department (or subgroup of department) | ||||||
Institution | ||||||
Extra-institutional | ||||||
Institution type studied | Research | |||||
Comprehensive | ||||||
Liberal arts | ||||||
Community college | ||||||
Mixed | ||||||
Unknown/not applicable | ||||||
Findings | ||||||
Significant findings/claims | Studying change | Designing change | Both | Neither | ||
Studying change – open | ||||||
Designing change – open | ||||||
Quality (claims supported by evidence) | Strongly supported | Mixed in support | Weakly supported | |||
Short summary – open | ||||||
Keep/eliminate | Keep for further analysis | Eliminate from further analysis | ||||
Comments | Open | |||||
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Henderson, C., Beach, A.L., Finkelstein, N. (2012). Four Categories of Change Strategies for Transforming Undergraduate Instruction. In: Tynjälä, P., Stenström, ML., Saarnivaara, M. (eds) Transitions and Transformations in Learning and Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2312-2_14
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