Studying STEM Faculty Communities of Practice through Social Network Analysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9008702 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shufeng Ma (0000-0002-0442-8587, Tsinghua University, corresponding author), Geoffrey Herman (0000-0002-9501-2295, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Matthew West (0000-0002-7605-0050, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana), Jonathan Tomkin (0000-0003-0195-3818, Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), José P Mestre (0000-0003-2110-1954, Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 773-799 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-09 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Higher Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-1546 • E-ISSN: 1538-4640 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00221546.2018.1557100 |
| OpenAlex | W2909946913 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 40 |
Stakeholders are increasingly calling for improving instruction in STEM by building environments that enable faculty to sustainably change their teaching practices. This study reports one institutional change effort that effectively facilitated faculty’s adoption of evidence-based instructional practices (EBIP), which is to organize faculty into teaching-focused communities of practice (CoPs). We examined the social interactions of faculty within CoPs and investigated whether faculty in CoPs that were actively adopting EBIP (adopting CoPs) had more frequent conversations and collaborations around teaching with their colleagues than faculty in CoPs that did not adopt EBIP (non-adopting CoPs). A sociometric survey was administered to document 89 faculty members’ social interactions within 22 CoPs. The social networks of the CoPs were compared using the social network measures of density, connectedness, centrality, breadth, and reciprocity. We found that adopting CoPs had higher density and connectedness than non-adopting CoPs while being less centralized. This result suggests that adopting CoPs used distributed leadership and included all members in communications regarding teaching, while non-adopting CoPs heavily relied on a lone hero to implement change, frequently excluding other members. These findings suggest that organizing faculty into CoPs that support regular interaction on teaching-related activities may be an effective strategy for improving STEM instruction
Centrality · Faculty Development · Interpersonal communication · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Political science · Professional development · Public relations · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Social capital · Social connectedness · Social network analysis · Social science · Sociology · Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods · Knowledge Management and Sharing · Online and Blended Learning · Psychology · Social Psychology
Gender Equity in Higher Education During Disruptive Events
Analyzing the Growth of a Statewide Network to Increase Recruitment to and Persistence in STEM
Using network science to understand the link between subjects and professions
Association of malleable factors with adoption of research-based instructional strategies in introductory chemistry, mathematics, and physics
Adoption of Pedagogical Innovations
Barriers to Change
How Expert and Inexpert Instructors Talk about Teaching
A Social Network Analysis of Engineering Faculty Connections
Guided reflection in collaborative problem-solving
Instructional leadership structures across five university departments
How expectations, feedback, and course materials relate to intellectual humility in higher education
Exploring Ethical Competence in Academia
The development of university teachers’ collaboration networks during a departmental professional development project
Understanding the Impact of a Multi-Institutional STEM Reform Network through Key Boundary-Spanning Individuals
Expanding Faculty Members’ Zone of Proximal Development to Enact Collective Agency for Racial Equity in Faculty Hiring
Social Network Analysis
Communities of Practice
Justice at the millennium, a decade later
ForceAtlas2, a Continuous Graph Layout Algorithm for Handy Network Visualization Designed for the Gephi Software
Analyzing Teachers’ Professional Interactions in a School as Social Capital
Facilitating change in undergraduate STEM instructional practices
Barriers to Faculty Pedagogical Change
Social network, social trust and shared goals in organizational knowledge sharing
Gephi
On the robustness of centrality measures under conditions of imperfect data
Higher Education Change and Social Networks
Channels of Change
The Effect of Institutional Culture on Change Strategies in Higher Education
The Roles of STEM Faculty Communities of Practice in Institutional and Departmental Reform in Higher Education
Friendship networks and social status
Collaboration and the need fortrust
Situated Learning
Structural Holes and Good Ideas
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,14 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 15 |