Agents of Change: Investigating How Partnerships between Faculty and Learning Assistants Enable Pathways for Sustainable Institutional and Classroom Transformation

变革的推动者：调查教师和学习助理之间的合作如何为可持续的机构和课堂转型提供途径

• 批准号: 2234073
• 负责人: Laura Rios
• 金额: $ 46.65万
• 依托单位: California Polytechnic State University Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-01 至 2028-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2234073&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Agents; Change; Investigating; How; Partnerships

This project aims to serve the national interest by exploring how partnerships between STEM faculty and undergraduate learning assistants (LAs) can enable sustainable institutional and classroom transformation that leads to more inclusive and engaging learning environments for students. The national LA model describes the well-established practice of embedding LAs in courses to assist in creating culturally responsive, student-centered, active learning environments. The model offers support to LAs through training that consists of a course on teaching and learning as well as weekly meetings with the course instructor to review relevant course content and prepare for class activities. STEM instructors will participate in novel professional development that engages LAs as partners in the process of implementing inclusive and active learning practices, leveraging LAs’ knowledge as students. These partnerships will also enable more accessible relational structures in the classroom. While prior research has demonstrated increased learning gains and other beneficial outcomes for LAs and students, it is important to fully characterize what happens on the ground that leads to such exciting learning gains, and to institutionalize key aspects of these programs. In this project, the researchers plan to study how the new support structures for faculty offered by the project enable new kinds of relationships to form between LAs and faculty. They will then model how those relationships lead to shifts in LA and faculty beliefs about teaching and learning, and examine which programmatic elements are necessary for institutional transformation. LA programs necessarily require involvement of many stakeholders, which makes them challenging to institutionalize. Therefore the project includes the infrastructure to collaborate with necessary administrators and learning centers in addition to faculty (tenure- and non-tenure track) and students to identify barriers and avenues to institutionalized change. Once completed, the critical elements of this project will be assembled to assist other institutions who are interested in developing an LA model at their institution or who already have an LA model and would like to further support their LA-faculty partnerships. The theory of change underpinning this project builds on existing models of LA-faculty collaboration and institutional change research to hypothesize how developing strong LA-faculty partnerships results in sustained improvements to STEM instruction. This project will study what partnership elements are necessary for effective and equitable changes in instruction to occur and what programmatic structure is required to enable such partnerships. This will be carried out in a three-phase program of research, faculty professional development, and institutionalization with the following goals. First is to characterize the dynamics of LA-faculty partnerships and how they impact classrooms. Second is to iteratively design, implement, and research supports for LA-faculty partnerships including cross-campus trainings and academies. Third, and finally, is to institutionalize key supports for sustaining the LA programs. Using a mixed methods approach, including iterative thematic coding of qualitative data and descriptive statistics of quantitative data, this project will analyze and triangulate: i) surveys and inventories for LAs, faculty, and students; ii) interviews with LAs and faculty; iii) observations of LA-faculty prep meetings; and iv) artifacts from the LA pedagogy course and faculty professional development. This project will compare LA programs on three California State University campuses, capitalizing on each of their strengths, and complementing and extending existing knowledge on the potential benefits of LA models. This project will compare progress across the three institutions and identify critical factors necessary for the success, scalability, and sustainability of LA-faculty partnership programs, contributing significantly to research on institutional change. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目旨在通过探索 STEM 教师和本科生学习助理 (LA) 之间的合作关系如何实现可持续的机构和课堂转型，从而为学生提供更具包容性和参与性的学习环境，从而服务于国家利益。将 LA 嵌入到课程中的做法，以帮助创建具有文化响应性、以学生为中心的主动学习环境。该模型通过培训为 LA 提供支持，培训包括教学课程以及每周与课程讲师举行的会议以审查相关内容。课程内容和上课准备STEM 教师将参与新颖的专业发展，让 LA 作为合作伙伴参与实施包容性和主动学习实践，利用 LA 作为学生的知识，而先前的研究表明，这些合作伙伴关系还将在课堂上实现更容易理解的关系结构。研究人员计划研究在该项目中研究人员计划研究的项目，其中包括对洛杉矶和学生的学习收益和其他有益成果的增加，充分描述导致如此令人兴奋的学习收益的实际情况非常重要。如何为教师提供新的支持结构该项目使洛杉矶和教师之间形成新型关系，然后他们将模拟这些关系如何导致洛杉矶和教师对教学和学习的信念发生转变，并研究哪些项目要素对于机构转型来说是必要的。因此，该项目包括与必要的管理人员和学习中心以及教师（终身教授和非终身教授）和学生合作的基础设施，以确定完成制度化变革的障碍和途径。 ，该项目的关键要素将聚集起来帮助其他有兴趣在其机构中开发 LA 模式或已经拥有 LA 模式并希望进一步支持其 LA-教师伙伴关系的机构。支撑该项目的变革理论建立在现有的 LA 模式之上。教师合作和机构变革研究，以开发强有力的洛杉矶教师伙伴关系如何导致 STEM 教学的持续改进。该项目将研究哪些伙伴关系要素是有效和公平的教学变革所必需的，以及实现这种伙伴关系需要什么样的计划结构。这将被执行。包括研究、教师专业发展和制度化三个阶段的计划，其目标如下：首先是描述洛杉矶-教师合作关系的动态及其对课堂的影响，其次是迭代地设计、实施和研究对洛杉矶的支持。 - 教师合作，包括跨校园培训和学院，第三，也是最后一点，是使用混合方法，包括定性数据的迭代主题编码和定量数据的描述性统计，将维持洛杉矶计划的关键支持制度化。将分析和三角测量：i）对 LA、教师和学生的调查和清单；ii）对 LA 和教师的访谈；iii）对 LA 教师准备会议的观察；以及 iv）来自 LA 教育学课程和教师专业发展的成果。该项目将比较三个加州州立大学校园的洛杉矶项目，利用它们各自的优势，并补充和扩展有关洛杉矶模型潜在优势的现有知识。该项目将比较三个机构的进展，并确定实施洛杉矶分校所需的关键因素。 NSF IUSE：EDU 项目支持研究和开发项目，通过其机构和社区转型轨道提高所有学生的 STEM 教育的有效性。该计划支持高等教育机构和学科界的 STEM 教育转型和改进工作。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。