Facilitating Change in Undergraduate STEM Education

• Published in: Change (New Rochelle, N.Y.) Vol. 44; no. 6; pp. 52 - 59
• Main Authors: Beach, Andrea L., Henderson, Charles, Finkelstein, Noah
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Taylor & Francis Group 01.11.2012; Routledge; Taylor & Francis Inc
• Subjects: Change Strategies; Changes; College Faculty; College instruction; College students; Curricula; Curriculum; Demography; Education; Education policy; Educational Change; Educational Improvement; Educational Policy; Educational research; Environmental education; Faculty Development; Higher education; Information Dissemination; Learning; Literature reviews; Mathematics education; Pedagogy; Physics; Policy Formation; Reflective Teaching; Science education; STEM Education; Teachers; Teaching Methods; Technology education; Undergraduate Study
• ISSN: 0009-1383; 1939-9146
• DOI: 10.1080/00091383.2012.728955

Despite having significant knowledge of effective practices, along with curricular and pedagogical resources, efforts to transform introductory sequences have met with only modest success. While educators may know what to do, they do not know how to enact and sustain these reforms at scale. What they need is a framework for understanding STEM instructional "change". In this article, the authors propose such a framework to provide a tool for those engaged in educational transformation at the undergraduate level, particularly within STEM education. They summarize findings from an interdisciplinary literature review, introduce a typology of change strategies, and use these to make recommendations for mechanisms of change. (Contains 1 figure and 8 resources.)