Facilitating Change in Undergraduate STEM: The Need to Problematize and Improve Our Approaches to Change Documents

Main Document

Facilitating Change in Undergraduate STEM: The Need to Problematize and Improve Our Approaches to Change 

written by Charles R. Henderson, Noah D. Finkelstein, and Andrea Beach

During the last several decades, educational researchers have focused significant attention on the improvement of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects.  These researchers have identified many shortcomings of "traditional" lecture-based instruction and have developed and demonstrated the efficacy of alternative models of instruction.  Yet, many STEM faculty continue to teach traditionally.  To better understand this situation we have conducted an interdisciplinary literature review related to change strategies employed in the improvement of undergraduate STEM instruction.  Results suggest that there are at least three important groups working towards such change and that approaches to change differ significantly by group.  In this session, we will present an overview of the literature review.  Participants will engage in discussions about how to combine the strengths of these different approaches towards promoting change as well as how to work towards an interdisciplinary agenda that can lead to improved communication and practice related to promoting change in undergraduate STEM instruction.

Collaborators:
Andrea Beach, Western Michigan University
Noah Finkelstein, University of Colorado, Boulder

This file is available in multiple formats: .pdf, .pptx

Last Modified March 20, 2009

This file has previous versions.