SMERC Seminar -- Unpacking the relationship between our beliefs about teaching and our instructional practices
Unpacking the relationship between our beliefs about teaching and learning and our instructional practicesDr. Marilyne StainsAssociate Professor, Department of ChemistryUniversity of Virginia AbstractIn this era of instructional transformation of STEM courses at the postsecondary level, the focus has been on educating science faculty about so-called evidence-based instructional practices, i.e. practices that have been empirically proven to enhance student learning outcomes. However, the literature on professional development has demonstrated a tight interconnectedness between ones’ beliefs about teaching and learning and one’s instructional practices and the need to attend to faculty’s beliefs when engaging them in instructional change processes. Within the last few years, discipline-based education researchers have provided meaningful insights into the instructional practices of STEM faculty and contextual factors that influence their instructional decisions. However, much less attention has been given to capturing the state of STEM faculty’s beliefs about teaching and learning. During this presentation, we will reflect as a group on our instructional belief system and its relationship to our practices. I will then share the results of a qualitative study that characterized the interplay between beliefs and instructional practices of nineteen novice chemistry faculty who had participated in the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative New Faculty Workshop.Speaker BioMarilyne Stains is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Virginia. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry for the Université des Sciences de Luminy in Marseilles, France; her Master in quantum chemistry from the Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France; her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Arizona. She started her academic career at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2011 and was promoted in 2016 to associate professor with tenure. This fall she moved to the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on characterizing the extent, nature, and factors involved in the gap between instructional practices in science college classrooms and discipline-based education research. She is specifically interested in 1) developing new methods to characterize instructional practices in STEM college classrooms, 2) exploring how faculty and teaching assistants think about their teaching, 3) identifying individual, departmental, and institutional factors that influence instructors' instructional decisions, and 4) characterizing the impact of different types of pedagogical professional development programs.
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