International Journal of STEM Education

This article is focused on the role of the facilitator in the professional development of mathematics teachers. It is a feature of several frameworks for using video that teachers are invited to comment on the detail of what they saw and heard, and base comments on evidence from the video. It is also a common finding that it is hard to establish ‘speaking evidentially’ as a way of working and at the same time, such an expectation is seen to be critical to making discussion productive. This article draws on a paradigmatic case of one video club, during which seven teachers met over a 3-month period, and shared video recordings of their own classrooms. The group of teachers learn how to focus on the detail of video, avoiding judgement, from the first session. The way this is achieved and what it occasions is analysed, within an enactivist methodology. The analysis of the first meeting of the video club shows how the facilitator has a focus on the kinds of comments made by teachers as well as their content. If a teacher makes a contribution that is not of the ‘kind’ required within the way of working, the facilitator is observed to highlight that the participant is not focused on the detail of events, and re-direct the group back to the intended task. This sequence of moves is not captured in current frameworks of how to facilitate video discussion. There is a suggestion that it is the very distinction between observation and interpretation or judgement that is significant for teachers and allows them to re-think their own teaching practices. This article aims to share awarenesses of the facilitator, concerning how it is possible to focus a group on the detail of events when using video. What the facilitator is doing, in highlighting when a norm has been breached, is making a judgement about the kind of comment made by participants, not judging the comment’s content. The meta-focus of the facilitator seems to allow enabling contraints to be placed on discussion while letting conversation follow the interests of participants.

In the USA, 28.5% of the population is considered underrepresented minority (URM) population; however, fewer than 8 % of US’ research faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines are minorities (National Research Council, Expanding underrepresented minority participation: America’s science and technology talent at the crossroads, 2011). In order to diversify the faculty, Big Ten Academic Alliance’s Professorial Advancement Initiative (PAI) provided high-quality professional development for URM postdocs across multiple institutions. This study is part of the larger PAI project and examined the goals and experiences of URM postdoctoral fellows in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In addition, we investigated the influence of a professional development workshop on postdocs’ self-efficacy to pursue grants, improve relationship with their mentor, and apply for academic jobs. Our findings suggest that URM postdocs face a number of challenges in their position and lack the confidence, knowledge, and skills to pursue a career in academia. Our professional development workshops focused on developing postdocs’ skills to pursue faculty positions significantly increased their self-efficacy in grant writing, improving relationship with their mentor, and applying for academic jobs. Our findings have important implications for postdoctoral training and providing professional development opportunities for minority postdocs in order to diversify the faculty in STEM disciplines. Future research should examine the long-term influence of workshops to prepare postdocs to pursue and be successful in academia.

Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) and Faculty Online Learning Communities (FOLCs) are ways to support STEM faculty implementing research-based curricula. In these communities, faculty facilitators take on the role of sharing expertise and promoting discussion. However, as members gain more experience, their needs change from addressing logistical to pedagogical issues. Hence, facilitators need to change their practices in response. However, there is little research on the mechanisms of faculty facilitator change. In this article, we provide a case study of a specific STEM FOLC facilitator and demonstrate the usefulness of a teacher change model to investigate facilitator change. Guided by our adaptation of the Interconnected Model of Professional Growth (IMPG), we conducted interviews with FOLC facilitators, and selected a case facilitator who reported changes in facilitation goals and strategies over time. The model helped us identify specific areas of change and potential mechanisms for these changes. Using themes of change identified in the case facilitator interview, we developed coding schemes to analyze his FOLC meetings over a 2-year period. We found empirical evidence from multiple data sources, including FOLC meetings and facilitator reflections, that supported the change themes, including: changing his role as an “expert” by sharing his own expertise less and drawing on others’ expertise more frequently, changing his response to members’ comments by jumping in to answer less frequently and withholding his own responses more often to encourage member sharing, and a change in group discussions towards less logistical and more pedagogical conversations. Our findings suggest that the IMPG can be fruitfully adapted to study facilitator change. A diagrammatic representation of the IMPG provides a description the types of change the case facilitator experienced and the factors that supported those changes. We discuss how the methodology used to analyze facilitator actions in FOLC group meetings may be useful to study other types of professional growth. Finally, because our analytical model allowed us to identify mechanisms of facilitator change, we describe the implications and provide suggestions to support facilitators in other faculty community groups.

The formation of an academic field is evidenced by many factors, including the growth of relevant research articles and the increasing impact of highly cited publications. Building upon recent scoping reviews of journal publications in STEM education, this study aimed to provide a systematic review of high impact empirical studies in STEM education to gain insights into the development of STEM education research paradigms. Through a search of the Web of Science core database, we identified the top 100 most-cited empirical studies focusing on STEM education that were published in journals from 2000 to 2021 and examined them in terms of various aspects, including the journals where they were published, disciplinary content coverage, research topics and methods, and authorship’s nationality/region and profession. The results show that STEM education continues to gain more exposure and varied disciplinary content with an increasing number of high impact empirical studies published in journals in various STEM disciplines. High impact research articles were mainly authored by researchers in the West, especially the United States, and indicate possible “hot” topics within the broader field of STEM education. Our analysis also revealed the increased participation and contributions from researchers in diverse fields who are working to formulate research agendas in STEM education and the nature of STEM education scholarship.

Being a successful peer-led team learning (PLTL) workshop leader involves developing content knowledge and workshop facilitation skills. These skills connected to being a peer leader, however, do not terminate at the end of one’s undergraduate program. In fact, many former peer leaders denote having been a peer leader on their LinkedIn profile. This study examines the transferable skills that former peer leaders identified as being valuable in their current positions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with former peer leaders from varying disciplines, universities, ages, and years since being a peer leader. Interview questions captured leadership experiences including successes and challenges of being peer leaders, roles and responsibilities, and specific transferable skills further developed by being peer leaders and how they are being utilized in the leaders’ current position. Thematic analyses of these interviews indicate that former peer leaders recognize leadership skills, coping with many challenges (including not having the right answer), collaboration/teamwork skills, self-confidence, and problem-solving skills as being relevant and frequently used in their current work.

Computer-aided learning management systems (LMSs) are widely used in higher education and are viewed as beneficial when transitioning from conventional face-to-face teaching to fully online courses. While LMSs have unique tools for transferring and assessing knowledge, their ability to engage and assess learners needs further investigation. This paper focuses on a study examining the LMS “Moodle” to ascertain the effectiveness of “Moodle quizzes” to improve, assess and distinguish knowledge in a civil engineering course at an Australian university. The course has a database comprising 62 formative and 61 summative quiz questions with embedded text, images, audio and video. This study investigates the use of these quiz questions with four course cohorts and 169 students. The quizzes assessed competencies of students during various stages of a study period through automated marking. The suitability of questions to assess and distinguish student knowledge levels was determined using a psychometric analysis based on facility index (FI) and the discrimination index (DI) statistics embedded within the Moodle quizzes. This study highlights strategies used to set and review quiz questions for formative and summative assessments. Results indicated that students were engaged and satisfied in the formative assessment because they viewed the interactive videos between 2 and 6 times and 65% of students attempted all the formative questions. The FI indicated student pass rate for the summative questions and DI indicated the difficulty of these questions, while the combination of FI and DI results separated students with different knowledge levels. Using these Moodle statistics provided information to make effective decisions on how to improve the summative quizzes. The multimodal quizzes were effective in teaching and assessing a theoretical engineering course and provided efficient methods to replace conventional assessments. The FI and DI indexes are useful statistical tools in redesigning appropriate sets of questions. Time-poor academics will benefit from using these easily attainable Moodle statistics to inform decisions while revising the quizzes and making assessments more autonomous.

Universal Design for Learning is not widely used in postsecondary STEM education. The purpose of this literature review is to synthesize the empirical literature using Universal Design for Learning in postsecondary STEM education for all learners. The criteria for this review are (a) empirical literature in (b) peer reviewed journals (c) published after 2006. Keywords used were STEM, UDL/UDI/Universal Design, and postsecondary/university/college/higher education. This review identified four studies and three literature reviews that met the search criteria; the analysis of the identified literature provides a model for how Universal Design for Learning can impact postsecondary STEM instruction, including an increase in inclusive teaching methods and self-advocacy from students with disabilities, and leads to recommendations for additional research.

Teaching-focused faculty positions have grown in popularity in higher education and provide novel opportunities to transform undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The University of California (UC) system employs a unique teaching-focused faculty position, officially called the Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment (L(P)SOE), with the working title called Professor of Teaching (PoT). The UC PoT position is a tenure-track position with teaching as the primary tenure expectation. We present findings from interviews with stakeholder faculty in STEM departments at three UC campuses to identify reasons for hiring PoT, capture accomplishments of PoT in their departments and disciplinary fields, and identify potential barriers to PoT success. Overall, this study highlights stakeholder’s perspectives on the value of teaching-focused faculty in research-intensive universities. Stakeholders described the goals for hiring Professors of Teaching, which included easing the burden of teaching responsibilities of the departments and adding consistency of instruction. While the stakeholders expressed that PoT were meeting the goals for being hired, they also identified many barriers for PoT being fully integrated and successful. The stakeholders expressed concern about unclear and unfair expectations related to tenure and promotion. The findings point to a general undervaluing and underappreciation of teaching-focused faculty and suggest that in order for PoT to have a positive impact on STEM higher education, they need more support and inclusion from their colleagues and institutions.