The project will address a gap in theory and research on institutional change in higher education. The proposed qualitative mixed methods research study will examine the role of professional societies in efforts to implement wide-scale use of evidenced-based teaching practices in undergraduate STEM education. The research project proposes to move beyond a change model focused on individual and teams of faculty to a change model focused on institutional and systems processes and mechanisms. The proposed study will examine the assumption that to broadly reshape STEM teaching, a reshaping of the norms of the most elite institutions must be undertaken in order to position these types of institutions as role models in efforts to scale-up evidence-based teaching practices in post-secondary education.
The field-based study will bring together a cultural and systems perspective on institutional change with an effort by the Association of American Universities (AAU) to test the relevance of three strategies that are identified in the literature as facilitating institutional change in higher education: creating discussions/deliberations; networks; and external support for reform. The proposed study will use the AAU STEM Initiative as a real-time innovation to examine the role a national organization can play in achieving scale-up of evidence-based teaching practices among its members. A qualitative mixed methods research design is aligned with a theoretical perspective that draws on social cognition and cultural and human development schools of thought that emphasize the importance of observations and interviews for understanding change processes. The theoretical approach posits that the phenomena under study are manifestations of social change processes, which are best studied through the use of participant-observation and semi-structured interviews with the goal of developing an understanding of the roles these phenomena play in scaling change. Considering that behaviors are driven by internal beliefs, perceptions and motives, interviews are important to uncover motivations for and perceptions of observed behaviors.
