Department of Biology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States of America.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2023 Aug 17;18(8):e0289464. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289464. eCollection 2023.
One of the primary reasons why students leave STEM majors is due to the poor quality of instruction. Teaching practices can be improved through professional development programs; however, several barriers exist. Creating lasting change by overcoming these barriers is the primary objective of the STEM Faculty Institute (STEMFI). STEMFI was designed according to the framework established by Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior. To evaluate its effectiveness, the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) tool was used before and after an intensive year-long faculty development program and analyzed using copusprofiles.org, a tool that classifies each COPUS report into one of three instructional styles: didactic, interactive lecture, and student-centered. We report the success of our program in changing faculty teaching behaviors and we categorize them into types of reformers. Then, thematically coded post-participation interviews give us clues into the characteristics of each type of reformer. Our results demonstrate that faculty can significantly improve the student-centeredness of their teaching practices in a relatively short time. We also discuss the implications of faculty attitudes for future professional development efforts.
学生离开 STEM 专业的主要原因之一是教学质量差。可以通过专业发展计划来改进教学实践，但存在一些障碍。克服这些障碍以实现持久变革是 STEM 教师学院（STEMFI）的主要目标。STEMFI 是根据 Ajzen 的计划行为理论建立的框架设计的。为了评估其效果，在为期一年的密集教师发展计划前后使用了本科生 STEM 课堂观察协议（COPUS）工具，并使用 copusprofiles.org 进行了分析，该工具将每份 COPUS 报告分类为三种教学风格之一：说教式、互动式讲座和以学生为中心。我们报告了我们的计划在改变教师教学行为方面的成功，并将他们分类为改革者类型。然后，对参与后的主题编码访谈为我们提供了每种改革者类型的特征线索。我们的结果表明，教师可以在相对较短的时间内显著提高他们的以学生为中心的教学实践。我们还讨论了教师态度对未来专业发展努力的影响。
