Grand Challenge 1:

How can we best support the continual growth of geoscience instructors' ability to teach effectively and implement research-supported teaching practices as they progress in their practice? How does the individual's cumulative experience, position type, institutional context, and the nature of the desired learning impact the type of learning opportunities that are most effective?

Rationale

Instructors play a central role in the students' geoscience education. Instructors design and implement learning experiences, interact individually with students and manage classroom climate, and are commonly on the front lines of mentoring and advising. Thus, professional development supporting their growth is a first-order strategy for improving geoscience education. Prior work has demonstrated that identity, motivation, context, the design of professional development, and participation in a supportive community all impact an instructor's learning and willingness to make changes in their practice (Andrews & Lemons, 2015, Condon et al., 2016; Chapman & McConnell, 2017; Gehrke & Kezar, 2016; Henderson, Beach, & Finkelstein, 2011; Kastens & Manduca, 2017; Kastens & Manduca, 2018; Pelch & McConnell, 2016, Yerrick, Parke, & Nugent, 1997). In the past 15 years, many faculty have participated in both institutional and disciplinary professional development opportunities, but others have not; practices have changed, but practices across the community have not been transformed (Manduca et al., 2017).

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Figure 2: New knowledge about teaching and learning (T&L) generated by GER and other learning science fields is continuously generated. Uptake of that knowledge is filtered by an instructor’s needs, motivations, and positionality, and is influenced by characteristics of the professional development program(s) in which the instructor learns about that new knowledge. The instructor may also produce and disseminates new knowledge.

Provenance: Kelsey Bitting, Elon University
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As we seek to broaden participation and accelerate change, further work is needed to understand how an instructor's personal history and identity interact with departmental, institutional, and disciplinary context and culture to first motivate learning and then support change (Figure 2). While prior research has largely focused on single professional development programs, further work is needed to understand how an individual's learning and change are supported by multiple experiences. Preliminary evidence also suggests that different types of learning may require different types of engagement: for example, beliefs about teaching may be relatively difficult to change (Yerrick, Parke, & Nugent, 1997) but can be effectively targeted through collaborative and authentic long-term engagement (Pelch & McConnell, 2016), while changes in practice that are consistent with the beliefs already held by a participant might be easier to achieve (e.g., Glackin, 2016). Further work is also needed to investigate the most effective strategies to motivate and sustain continual geoscience instructor growth and learning of various types.

Recommended Research Strategies

1. Conduct longitudinal studies of individual geoscience instructors representing a variety of identity characteristics and institutions, with special attention to how they make decisions about potential instructional learning and change over time, and what motivational factors are at play.
2. Conduct interviews with geoscience professional development leaders and review existing literature to identify common learning objectives for geoscience instructors. Convene a small working group to sort those objectives according to the cognitive processes, level of challenge, and type of change required to provide a typology of learning objectives.
3. Based on the typology of learning objectives, identify or design assessment measures for each category. Recommend the use of those assessment instruments across future professional development programs to allow consistent comparisons and future meta-analyses.
4. Construct and widely-administer a survey designed to develop a broader picture of the teaching-related needs among a diverse geoscience instructor population (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, type of employment/position, career stage, etc.).
5. Conduct longitudinal studies of individual geoscience instructors representing a variety of identity characteristics and institutions, with special attention to how they make decisions about potential instructional learning and change over time, and what motivational factors are at play.
6. Evaluate the impact that existing types of professional development programs have on supporting diverse geoscience instructors in changing their choice and implementation of instructional strategies using longitudinal multi-case studies on programs' impact on instruction.

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