Report | Journal Articles | Research Team | Background & Goals | Partner & Funder
Reports
Scaling Improvement in STEM Learning Environments: The Strategic Role of a National Organization
Adrianna Kezar (2018)
This capstone report of the Scaling STEM Reform study evaluates the national organization Association of American Universities' role in improving undergraduate STEM education at its member institutions.
A joint publication between the Association of American Universities and the Pullias Center, the report details and assesses the AAU's efforts to accelerate and scale changes in STEM education at research universities through its Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative, as well as point to future steps that could be taken---both by AAU and other national organizations---to make progress toward achieving the widespread improvement in the quality and effectiveness of undergraduate STEM teaching.
Categories: STEM Reform
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Scaling Change in Higher Education: A Guide for Stakeholder Groups
Adrianna Kezar, Elizabeth Holcombe, Joseph Kitchen (2018)
Created for key external stakeholder groups that support change and reform of the higher education enterprise, this guide presents a toolkit with practical advice on how to be effective partners in working with colleges and universities to support changes that go to scale.
The guide serves as an action-oriented companion piece to the report, Scaling Improvement in STEM Learning Environments: The Strategic Role of a National Organization.
Categories: STEM Reform, Guides
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Journal Articles
Kezar, A., & Holcombe, E. (2019). Examining learning in a multi-institutional initiative: An examination of barriers. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904819843594
Kezar, A., Miller, E., Bernstein-Serra, S., & Holcombe, E. (2019). The promise of a “network of networks” strategy to scale change: Lessons from the AAU STEM initiative. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 51(2), 47-54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.2019.1569973
Research Team
Adrianna Kezar
Project Lead and Principal Investigator
Samantha Bernstein-Sierra
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Elizabeth Holcombe
Research Assistant
Background and Goals
In 2011, the Association of American Universities (AAU) launched its initiative to improve undergraduate STEM education. AAU’s goal was to influence the culture of STEM departments at its member universities in ways that would encourage their faculty members to use teaching practices proven by research to be effective in engaging students and helping them learn.
But how effectively was the association moving towards this goal? To get an independent assessment of its efforts, AAU sought out the Pullias Center’s Adrianna Kezar, a noted expert in higher education change, governance and leadership.
Thus, in Sep. 2014, Kezar and her team began a study called Scaling STEM Reform. Funded by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, the study uses the AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative as a real-time, field-based innovation to examine the role a national organization can play in achieving scale of evidence-based teaching practices among its members.
The overarching goal of the study is to understand how AAU’s initiative might reform undergraduate STEM teaching and learning on a large scale, going beyond individuals and teams of faculty to institutions and systems. The study examines scaling changes at the 8 AAU project sites, across all 62 AAU institutions and beyond to other research universities.
In contrast to previous studies of scale that have used predominantly qualitative methods, Scaling STEM Reform takes a mixed methods approach, making use of previously collected metric data but emphasizing interviews and observations as means to get to the the key underlying mechanisms around motivation, ownership, norms and sustainability.
The value of this project will be to contribute significant insight into the mechanisms that can be used by major national organizations such as AAU to help promote and scale STEM pedagogical reforms.
Partner
Founded in 1900, the Association of American Universities comprises 62 distinguished institutions in the United States and Canada that continually advance society through education, research, and discovery. AAU members collectively help shape policy for higher education, science, and innovation; promote best practices in undergraduate and graduate education; and strengthen the contributions of research universities to society.
Funder
This project is funded by a three-year grant from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program within the Department of Undergraduate Education of the National Science Foundation, under Grant No. NSF DUE-1432766.