"I got in trouble": A case study of faculty "doing school" during professional development
(Nov 30, 2015)Abstract
Professional development workshops are commonly used to promote the adoption
of research-based instructional strategies among physics and astronomy faculty.
After learning about such strategies, faculty are often motivated to modify and
adapt them within their own classrooms, but prior research shows they may be
underprepared to do so in ways likely to maintain the positive student outcomes
the designers were able to foster. In this paper, we analyze the experiences of
a focal group of faculty during one session of the Physics and Astronomy New
Faculty Workshop, where they are asked to engage in a task as mock physics
students. We compare their experiences to student behaviors documented in
others' research, and find that their group coordination and sense-making
poorly represent the kinds of interactions our community would encourage them
to foster in their own students. We briefly discuss the implications of these
preliminary findings for professional development and our plans for future
research.