CAREER: Overcoming Pedagogical Inertia: Amplifying the Course Transformation Narratives of Engineering Education's Positive Deviants

职业：克服教学惰性：放大工程教育积极偏差的课程转型叙述

• 批准号: 2238546
• 负责人: Alexandra Strong
• 金额: $ 62.21万
• 依托单位: Florida International University
• 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: 2023-08-01 至 2028-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2238546&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Overcoming; Pedagogical; Inertia; Amplifying

As a field, engineering education has focused significant effort on overcoming barriers to change, often through solutions requiring high levels of administrative and financial support. While achieving impact, these solutions have the potential to miss the hundreds of departments and institutions that do not have access to these same resources. Further, the field’s focus on specific barriers has overshadowed existing change approaches among educators in resource-limited contexts. The stories of these educators are rarely amplified, even though they present an opportunity to explore alternative approaches to change and understand the specific strategic actions these individuals take to impact change. With that in mind, this CAREER project aims to develop visible examples of alternative approaches to curricular transformation and co-design interventions (e.g., workshops, activities, resources) that will be led and disseminated by engineering educators in their own departmental, institutional, and disciplinary communities. By examining and making visible these alternative approaches, this work will complement and work synergistically with the existing research examining barriers to educational change, large-scale collaborative change efforts, and engineering education faculty development. Overall, the results of this CAREER project will advance knowledge by articulating the individual, structural and cultural supports and barriers for impacting course and curricular transformation that can be used by faculty and graduate student developers, administrators, and funding agencies.This CAREER award will leverage the positive deviance approach, which is an asset-based and participatory approach to change. The three-phase integrated research and education plan builds on the core tenants of the approach: a recognition that solutions already exist within the engineering education community, partnerships with community members to discover possible solutions, and a central focus on assets (as opposed to barriers and constraints). In particular, the research plan is grounded in theories of professional agency and designed to co-construct an understanding of how to foster agency toward curricular change by exploring the experiences and pathways of engineering educators who have overcome pedagogical inertia. In the first phase, a survey of engineering educators will provide a foundational understanding of the distinguishing and unifying characteristics among faculty pursuing curricular transformation. From the results of this survey, educators that have successfully developed transformational curricular designs while facing barriers that have impeded change in other contexts (a.k.a., positive deviants) will be recruited for participation in Phase 2a. Phase 2a will be focused on a multiple case study examining three data sources (i.e., in-depth interviews, observations of course sessions, and curricular-change-related documents). These data sources will be analyzed using narrative analysis methodologies to create in-depth change stories of these educators (n=12-15). The research and education plans will be integrated within Phase 2b through a collaborative inquiry of engineering educators (n=8-12) who want to pursue curricular transformation work. The outcomes of this collaborative inquiry will be community validation of the change stories and educator-led dissemination and propagation activity designs. The educator participants will lead the dissemination of these activities to their disciplinary, departmental, and institutional communities. The final phase captures the education plan and will include activities each year of the project. This third phase will seek to make change visible by developing a professional learning framework for courses and workshops on educational change, enabling educator-led dissemination to their communities, and amplifying the change stories of the positive deviants through multiple mediums.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.

作为一个领域，工程教育通常通过需要高水平的行政和财政支持的解决方案来克服变革的障碍。在实现影响的同时，这些解决方案有可能错过几百个无法获得这些资源的部门和机构。此外，该领域对特定障碍的关注掩盖了在资源有限的环境中教育中现有的变化方法。这些教育者的故事很少被放大，尽管他们为探索改变和理解这些人影响变化所采取的具体战略行动的替代方法提供了机会。考虑到这一点，该职业项目旨在开发可见的课程转型和共同设计干预措施（例如，讲习班，活动，资源）的替代例子，这些方法将由其自己部门，机构和学科社区中的工程教育者领导和传播。通过检查并使这些替代方法可见，这项工作将与现有的研究协同作用，研究教育变革，大规模合作变革工作和工程教育教师发展的障碍。总体而言，该职业项目的结果将通过阐明个人，结构和文化支持以及影响课程和现代转型的障碍来提高知识，并可以由教职员工和研究生开发人员，管理人员和资助机构使用。这项职业奖将利用积极的偏差方法，这是一种基于资产和参与的变化方法。三相综合的研究和教育计划建立在方法的核心租户上：认识到解决方案已经存在于工程教育社区中的解决方案，与社区成员的合作伙伴关系以发现可能的解决方案，以及对资产的核心重点（与障碍和约束相对）。特别是，该研究计划基于专业机构的理论，旨在通过探索克服教学惯性的工程教育者的经验和途径来共同建立对如何促进课程变革的理解。在第一阶段，对工程教育者的调查将对追求课程转型的教师之间的区别和统一特征提供基本的理解。从这项调查的结果来看，将成功开发出变革性课程设计的教育工作者面对在其他情况下阻碍变化的障碍（又称积极的偏差），将招募参与第2A阶段。第2A阶段将集中在多个案例研究上，研究三个数据源（即深入访谈，当然会议的观察以及与课程变化相关的文档）。这些数据源将使用叙事分析方法进行分析，以创建这些教育者的深入变化故事（n = 12-15）。研究和教育计划将通过想要纯粹的课程转型工作的工程教育者（n = 8-12）的协作询问（n = 8-12）来纳入2B阶段。此协作询问的结果将是社区验证变更故事和教育者主导的传播和传播活动设计。教育参与者将领导将这些活动传播给其纪律，部门和机构社区。最后阶段捕获了教育计划，并将包括项目的每一年活动。这第三阶段将试图通过为教育变革的课程和讲习班开发专业学习框架，使教育工作者领导的社区传播，并通过多种媒介扩大积极偏差的变化故事，以反映NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的智力上的评估来诚实地评估支持。