Reform efforts in different parts of the world call for the adoption of integrated approaches to STEM education. However, little is known about how teachers work, as members of learning communities, to design STEM teaching material such as lesson plans. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the design of STEM lesson plans by…

This report analyzes the design process that campus teams use to create sustained professional development (SPD) programs such as faculty learning communities for VITAL faculty. The authors begin with a description of the larger research project that this report contributes to, including an overview of earlier research and methodology for the…

Learning centers and academic support programs are often idealized entities campuses look to for student success, retention, and engagement. By untethering our thinking about program boundaries, identities, and alliances and radically reforming, we can generate interest, passion, and opportunities across campus. The force of redistributing…

Our department is in the early stages of a multi-year effort to nurture a culture that values active learning. We focus on the change process, including specific, pragmatic ideas from the literature on grassroots leadership and systemic change. We briefly review Wenger's work on cultivating communities of practice and use Wenger's evaluation of…

In the context of national collaborative efforts to increase the prevalence of active learning strategies in undergraduate precalculus and calculus classrooms, we discuss the context, strategy, and processes used at one university to create change within a mathematics department. We highlight the use of a unified active learning approach and the…

This study examines how involvement in four undergraduate faculty communities of practice is associated with faculty perceiving they improved in individual practices related to STEM reform. It is informed by the communities of practice and faculty change literature and utilizes data gathered through a survey of community members (n = 2503). The…

Recent national reports (e.g., Carnegie Corporation 2009; National Research Council 2012a) call for increased attention to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education to better prepare students for the demands of a scientific, technical, creative and critical thinking workforce (Honey, Pearson, & Schweingruber, 2014;…

This is the third of a three-part series which will share information about how a mid-size, comprehensive university has worked to a learning community program, including a residential curriculum. This article focuses on how those working with Learning Communities navigate program development during changing institutional priorities.

The educational landscape around standards, assessment, professional development, and funding is changing at a rapid pace. This article asks how can education institutions--and educators--respond with a balance of urgency and coherence? How can education institutions temper the need for risk-taking and innovation with the responsibility to deliver…

Faculty in the School of Education have collaborated to re-envision teacher education at our university. A complex, dynamic, time-consuming and sometimes painstaking process, redesigning a teacher education program from a traditional approach (i.e. where courses focus primarily on theoretical principles of practice through textbooks and…

Purpose: Although the number of higher education institutions adopting sustainability-focused faculty learning communities (FLCs) has grown, very few of these programs have published evaluation research. This paper aims to report findings from an evaluation of the University of Vermont's (UVM's) sustainability faculty fellows (SFF) program. It…

The Excellent Educators for All initiative is the most recent federal policy effort to address unequal access to teacher quality in the United States. States were required to submit equity plans to the U.S. Department of Education that detailed how to ensure that poor and minority children do not receive instruction from less qualified teachers.…

I narrate a process of transformation, a professional and personal journey framed by an experience that captured my attention shaping my interpretation and reflections. From a critical complexity framework I discuss the emergence of a learning community from the cooperation among individuals of diverse social and cultural worlds sharing the need…

Creating an engaged campus is a process that takes support, resources, and programs from all levels of a college or university campus. While some may argue that sustainable change is only possible when directed by university administration, others counter that nothing is sustainable if faculty and staff are not empowered to implement the programs.…

The purpose of this research is to identify factors that influence the functioning of a school working as a Professional Learning Community (PLC) and to analyze the links between these factors and the school's progression. This research was developed within the context of an interpretative research paradigm. The primary data collection tool…