a close look at change: the role of an instructional-team

RESEARCH Open Access

A close look at change: the role of aninstructional-team community on anInstructor’s evolution during instructionalreformKatelyn M. Southard1*† , Susan D. Hester2†, Jazmin Jurkiewicz2, Joan E. Curry3, Young Ae Kim2, Jonathan Cox4,Lisa K. Elfring1, Paul Blowers5 and Vicente Talanquer2

Abstract

In transforming undergraduate STEM education, it is important to understand the personal and contextual factorsthat impact instructors’ reform efforts. In this study we explored an instructor’s drivers and motivators for change inperspectives and practice, with an emphasis on the impact of an internal community (her ‘instructional team’)comprised of a co-instructor, graduate teaching assistants, and several undergraduate learning assistants (LAs). Datawere collected over two semesters through classroom observations, interviews, faculty learning communitydiscussion recordings, and team email communications. We identified pedagogical discontentment as a primaryinitial trigger for the instructor’s engagement in instructional reform, guided by personal values and beliefs aboutstudent learning and the nature of her discipline. The instructional-team community, which was established duringa period of instructional distress, provided 1) consistent support in instructional planning, implementation,assessment, and reflection processes, 2) unique access to different perspectives on the nuances of the teachingenvironment and student challenges, 3) increased space, time, and motivation for the instructor to more criticallyreflect on her teaching and engage in creative instructional design. This case illustrates the potential effects ofinstructional team-based communities on instructors as they work to improve their practice and reform theircourses.

Keywords: Instructor change, Professional development, Instructional reform, Post-secondary teaching,Instructional-teams model

IntroductionMany voices have called for large-scale transformationof undergraduate STEM classes from traditional di-dactic lectures to environments that foster meaningfullearning through active student engagement (AAAS,2011; NRC, 2012). As college instructors transformtheir classrooms, it is important to learn how to

facilitate long-term adoption of evidence-based teach-ing practices. To design effective professional develop-ment activities and support instructors in enactingmeaningful instructional reform, we must understandthe factors—both internal and external to instruc-tors—that impact engagement in this process (Auer-bach & Andrews, 2018; Ebert-May et al., 2011).There is a body of research investigating what shapes

teachers’ acceptance and meaningful incorporation ofreform-based strategies into their teaching practice. Suchwork has highlighted the role of diverse factors onteacher change, including pedagogical discontentment

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* Correspondence: [email protected] M. Southard and Susan D. Hester are Co-first authors.1Office of Instruction and Assessment, University of Arizona, 101, PO Box210070, Tucson, AZ 85721, USAFull list of author information is available at the end of the article

Disciplinary and InterdisciplinaryScience Education Research

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(Feldman, 2000; Southerland et al., 2011; Gess-Newsomeet al., 2003), teacher self-efficacy (Southerland et al.,2011), teacher beliefs (Anderson, 2002; Woodbury &Gess-Newsome, 2002), and contextual factors such asformal institutional structures, the local culture, and ac-cepted norms (Woodbury & Gess-Newsome, 2002).Much of this work, however, has focused on teacherchange at the K-12 level (with some exceptions, e.g.,Gess-Newsome et al., 2003; Henderson et al., 2009;Czajka & McConnell, 2016). Although many of thesefactors are likely to apply to instructors at the post-secondary level, key differences are likely to have impli-cations for how to support successful reform. Forinstance, traditional institutional structures and practicesin post-secondary educational contexts create specificchallenges that have proven to be quite difficult to over-come (Stains et al., 2018). These challenges include lackof meaningful incentives to engage in educational reformand lack of time in a college culture that overvalues re-search over teaching activities. Furthermore, K-12 in-structors are educated in pedagogical theory andmethods and are typically required to participate in on-going professional-development activities. In contrast,post-secondary instructors are typically experts in theirdisciplinary backgrounds but have little or no formalteaching training, and often find little institutional sup-port for participating in professional development (e.g.,Brownell & Tanner, 2012; Ebert-May et al., 2011; Kem-ber & McKay, 1996). Such differences in context and ex-perience impact the internal and external factors knownto influence the success of reform efforts. Thus, investi-gations in post-secondary education settings are neces-sary to understand how theories built through researchin K-12 can best transfer to and be useful for supportingmeaningful reform at this level.At the post-secondary level, there has been a focus on

how to gain instructors’ “buy-in” to reforms such asimplementing evidence-based, student-centered teachingpractices (Blumberg, 2016). Work following up with in-structors who have indicated buy-in to the ideas ofevidence-based instruction (Dancy & Henderson, 2010)and participated in professional development (Ebert-May et al., 2011), however, has demonstrated the signifi-cant gap that often exists between embracing these ideasand enacting them in practice. This highlights the im-portance of characterizing factors that have supported(or challenged) instances of instructors successfullychanging their enacted practice to align with reformgoals in higher-education settings after initial buy-in.There is evidence that working collaboratively with

others to improve teaching can have important impactson instructors as they set out to reform their instruction.Characterizations of instructor change at the post-secondary level have demonstrated or suggested that

collaborating with expert others acting as co-instructorsor coaches can support STEM instructors’ successfuladoption of reform-based practices (e.g., Czajka &McConnell, 2016; Gess-Newsome et al., 2003; Hender-son et al., 2009). In both K-12 and post-secondary edu-cation, structured groups of peers such as actionresearch groups (Feldman et al., 2001; Zuber-Skerritt,1992) and faculty learning communities (Cox, 2004; Cox& McDonald, 2017) have also been discussed for theirpotential to support instructors’ reform efforts.Here, we consider the impacts of a different commu-

nity on a college instructor’s efforts to reform a largeintroductory undergraduate course: an instructionalteam comprised of a junior co-instructor, graduateteaching assistants and undergraduate learning assistants(LAs). We sought to characterize the factors that af-fected this instructor’s decisions and actions, after initialbuy-in to active and collaborative learning, as she en-gaged in significant, meaningful instructional reformover a period of two semesters. We were particularly in-terested in the role that her instructional team played inthe evolution of her teaching perspectives and practice.

Theoretical frameworkIn analyzing this case, we drew on Gess-Newsomeet al.’s “Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform” model. Wechose this as a framework for its potential to provide auseful lens on the interactions between different factorsimpacting one instructor, “Jay” (pseudonym), and herengagement in a period of rapid, intense instructionalreform.

Teacher-centered systemic reform modelGess-Newsome and collaborators have developed aliterature-based model for analyzing factors that canconstrain or support engagement in instructional reformefforts (Gess-Newsome et al., 2003; Woodbury & Gess-Newsome, 2002). Their “Teacher-Centered Systemic Re-form” (TCSR) model accounts for the influence andinterrelatedness of contextual factors (characteristics ofthe different contexts in which teaching occurs), per-sonal factors (characteristics of the individual instructorthat are relevant to their teaching), teacher thinking(knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning),and enacted practice (how an instructor plans and im-plements instruction).At the post-secondary level, contextual factors include

characteristics of the classroom, department, institution,and broader cultural contexts within which instructiontakes place (Gess-Newsome et al., 2003). Such factorsmay be, e.g., physical, demographic, cultural, structural,or disciplinary. Contextual factors at the institutionaland departmental levels are often central to conversa-tions around barriers to reforming teaching at the post-

Southard et al. Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research (2021) 3:8 of 18

secondary level. In particular, lack of time and incentivesfor undertaking reform efforts, or adopting and main-taining reform-orientated teaching approaches, arecommonly-cited reasons why college and university fac-ulty do not adopt more reform-based practices (Brownell& Tanner, 2012). In fact, disincentives may exist, asundertaking serious reform can entail risks, e.g., due topoor teaching evaluations during early stages of reform,skepticism from peers or leadership (particularly in theface of student push-back), and decreased time for re-search, service and administrative activities needed to se-cure or advance one’s career. Cases in which these typesof factors are mediated, e.g., through involvement with aprestigious grant, however, point to the conclusion thataddressing these barriers is necessary, but not sufficient,for fostering meaningful reform (Brownell & Tanner,2012; Gess-Newsome et al., 2003). This is because per-sonal factors and teacher thinking are also powerful me-diators of instructional practice.Personal factors in the TCSR model include character-

istics of individual instructors relevant to their thinkingand decisions about teaching. Personal factors include,e.g., the nature and extent of teaching experience, theextent and nature of preparation to teach, pedagogicalknowledge and strategies, the extent and nature ofresource-seeking and learning efforts, and professionaland life experience (Gess-Newsome et al., 2003; Wood-bury & Gess-Newsome, 2002). Because they make up aninstructors’ experiences and disposition about teachingand their discipline, personal factors shape teacherthinking, which encompasses knowledge and beliefsabout teaching, the role of schooling, the role of the in-structor, the nature of learning and learners, and the dis-cipline or content being taught (Gess-Newsome et al.,2003; Woodbury & Gess-Newsome, 2002). Another keyelement of teacher thinking is the nature and extent ofpedagogical discontentment, which arises when an in-structor is dissatisfied with the effectiveness of theircurrent instructional goals and strategies (Feldman,2000; Gess-Newsome et al., 2003; Southerland et al.,2011; Woodbury & Gess-Newsome, 2002).Gess-Newsome and colleagues have demonstrated the

usefulness of the TCSR model as an analysis tool. For in-stance, in one study, they analyzed factors influencing agrant-funded reform effort for a college-level science la-boratory course. Using the TCSR as a frame, they deter-mined that many of the typical contextual barriers toreform had been removed or minimized by the grant,and highlighted the role of the designer-instructors’ per-sonal factors and teacher thinking in supporting or limit-ing the success of the reform effort (Gess-Newsomeet al., 2003). Moreover, a strength of the TCSR is that ithighlights the importance of considering interactions be-tween contextual and personal factors, teacher thinking,

and enacted practice. For example, Gess-Newsome andcolleagues used the TCSR as a template to identify keyinteracting factors affecting the course of a mathematicsreform effort across two high schools. In particular, theyfound that contextual factors (aspects of department cul-ture and nature of the reform messages) interacted withpersonal factors (teachers’ sense of autonomy, theirknowledge of mathematics, and their experiences withprofessional development) to influence teacher thinkingabout the necessity for pedagogical or curricular changeand, ultimately, how teachers took up reform practices(or didn’t) (Woodbury, 2000; Woodbury & Gess-Newsome, 2002).

Research questionsIn the current case study, we used the TCSR as a frame-work for analyzing the key factors that influenced Jay’sinstructional reform efforts, and the unique role playedby Jay’s instructional team. We applied the frameworkdynamically, considering the evolution of and interplaybetween personal factors, contextual factors, teacherthinking and enacted practice over the period of the casestudy. In doing so, we addressed the following researchquestions:

1) What were the factors that motivated Jay’sinstructional reform? How did these factors impactJay’s instructional reform decisions?

2) How did personal factors, contextual factors,teacher thinking, and enacted practice interact andevolve over the period of reform studied? Whatwere key events that impacted this evolution?

3) What role did the instructional team play in theevolution of key factors?

MethodsStudy contextInstitutionThe case described here took place at a large publicland-grant research-intensive university in the SouthwestUS. The university enrolls ~ 36,000 undergraduate stu-dents, including ~ 30,000 full-time students. The univer-sity serves a diverse student population. It is a Hispanic-Serving Institution (> 25% of full-time undergraduatestudents identify as Hispanic) with a substantial percent-age of minority students (~ 40%). A large percentage (~30%) of undergraduates are first-generation full-timecollege students.

The instructional-teams projectThis study is part of an overarching NSF-funded project,the Instructional-Teams Project (I-TP). The I-TP hasbeen implemented since Spring 2017. The I-TP seeks tosupport STEM instructors’ successful enactment of


evidence-based, student-centered instruction in theirclassrooms by focusing on three areas: high-functioninginstructional teams, design and implementation of high-quality instructional tasks, and effective use of formativeassessment. Instructors who participate in the I-TP com-mit to participating in professional development activ-ities as part of bi-weekly I-TP Faculty LearningCommunities (FLCs), recruiting team members to fillspecialized I-TP team roles, and meeting regularly withmembers of their instructional teams. Direct support tothe instructors from the I-TP is provided through (1)the FLCs in the form of structured professional-development activities, (2) access to the expertise of aFLC facilitator (an I-TP project member or veteran par-ticipant) and other I-TP project members, (3) feedbackand insight from other FLC participants, and (3) trainingcourses for student members of the instructional team.An informational recruitment flyer describing the I-TPcomponents and expectations for team members, as wellas an outline of I-TP FLC professional-development ac-tivities during the period of the case study, are includedin the Supplementary Material. Further description ofthe project can also be found in (Kim et al., 2019).Instructors participate in the I-TP on a volunteer basis,

and are not incentivized to join the project. Participantsare recruited through multiple channels intended to tar-get instructors with interest in adopting or improvingimplementation of evidence-based instructional prac-tices. Primarily, participants are recruited through e-mailor office visits to instructors on a list of instructorsteaching in Collaborating Learning Spaces on campus,through announcements in other Faculty Learning Com-munities unrelated to the project, and through word-of-mouth referral by colleagues. As of Spring 2021, 22 in-structors from 12 different academic departments haveparticipated in the I-TP. These participants include ten-ured professors (7), career-track faculty (non-tenure eli-gible, teaching-focused faculty with representation in theFaculty Senate) (13), a tenure-eligible assistant professor(1) and a graduate student (1).

Case study subject selectionWe selected Jay’s case for intensive data collection uponher joining the I-TP because she seemed poised for aperiod of significant instructional change worth charac-terizing. A pre-participation interview revealed that Jayhad become increasingly dissatisfied with her pedagogy,and that she had collected personal, anecdotal evidenceof the value of small-scale, learner-centered instructionalstrategies in her own teaching and wished to build onthose experiences. She joined the I-TP for its potentialto support these efforts. Moreover, Jay—a tenured fac-ulty member with a departmental reputation as an ef-fective instructor—faced relatively little risk from

possible setbacks in her reform efforts. As a result, Jayplanned a uniquely ambitious ‘overhaul’ of her large-enrollment introduction to environmental sciencecourse. The significance of the planned course reform,the drastic changes in instructional practices that wouldbe required to carry out such reform, and the inherentattending challenges made Jay’s case promising for ob-serving significant instructional change. Finally, her par-ticipation in the I-TP during this period allowed us toinvestigate the potential role of an instructional team insupporting this change.

Course contextThe I-TP encourages instructors engaging in significantinstructional changes, like Jay, to tackle one course at atime. Jay selected her Introduction to EnvironmentalScience course for reform as a part of the I-TP. Thiscourse is a general education course serving both Envir-onmental Science majors and non-majors. During thetwo semesters in which data were collected for thisstudy, the course was taught in a Collaborative LearningSpace (a classroom specifically designed—or, as in thiscase, retrofitted—to support collaborative student activ-ities, e.g., by having group tables rather than stadiumseating, having white boards positioned around the roomwhere students can work on them, screens distributedaround the classroom for easy viewing throughout theroom, etc.). Students were seated at tables of 4 with pro-jector screens situated around the perimeter of theroom. Class periods were 50 min long and met 3 days aweek. Course enrolment varied in the two observed se-mesters (Fall, 144 students; Spring, 101 students).

Jay’s instructional teamThe makeup and roles of Jay’s instructional team duringthe case period is summarized in Table 1 (we have usedpseudonyms for all team members). Jenny was a newfaculty member hired into a teaching-intensive careertrack position the semester prior to the case study andassigned as a co-instructor for the course during the twosemesters of the case study. Jenny had previously taughtcourses in forest management and conservation, and haddeveloped and taught field laboratory courses in Envir-onmental Science. This was her first experience with alarge lecture-style course and with teaching the particu-lar content of the course. Sarah was a graduate studentwho had worked closely with Jay for several semesters ina teaching assistantship role for other courses. She there-fore had a good working relationship with Jay, thoughshe had no particular knowledge of the course being re-formed. Two of the LAs, Lane and Tay, were under-graduate students majoring in Environmental Science.They had each taken the course from Jay in a previoussemester. The other, Peter, was a graduate student in


Environmental Sciences who was interested in gainingclassroom experience. None of the LAs had previous ex-perience teaching or serving on an instructional team.They received academic credit for their service in thecourse and participation in an associated teaching work-shop led by Jay.

Professional development contextAs part of their participation in the I-TP project, Jay andJenny participated in professional development activitiesin I-TP FLC meetings every 2 weeks; these focused onbuilding an effective team, instructional task design, andformative assessment (an outline of these activities is in-cluded in the Supplemental Materials). Sarah, the Learn-ing Researcher, participated in a 1-credit I-TP-ledcourse focused on collecting, interpreting, and commu-nicating evidence of student thinking for formative as-sessment. The LAs, Lane, Peter, and Tay, took part in ateaching workshop led by Jay as part of the credit re-quirement for their service in the course (a structurethat Jay “inherited” from her predecessor), in which theyworked with Jay over the course of the semester to eachdevelop and implement a day of instruction on a coursetopic.

Data collectionIn order to observe change, specifically factors that facil-itated change and assisted in navigating barriers, we useda variety of data collection methods over two semesters(Fall, Spring). The data collection was designed to inves-tigate changes in instructor perspective and teachingpractices.To observe Jay’s reflections on her instructional per-

spectives, decisions, and practice over the two semestersof the case-study period, we conducted five semi-structured clinical interviews lasting between 1 and 2 h.These interviews were conducted before (pre) and at theend (post) of each of the two target semesters, and atthe middle of the fall semester. Interview questions were

intended to prompt Jay’s reflections on her personal per-spective of her instructional changes and instructional-team dynamics. Observations and audio recordings ofbi-weekly I-TP FLC meetings (a total of 15 1-h meetingsover the two semesters) were also collected in order toobserve changes in the ways Jay discussed her teachingphilosophies and practices in a peer-community setting.In order to observe evolution in Jay’s instructional

practice as well as the impact of the instructional teamcommunity on instructional design, implementation, andreflection, daily classroom observations were conductedby the first author during both target semesters. Theseobservations included observations of pre- and post-class impromptu meetings between Jay and her instruc-tional team. Daily audio recordings of the classroomwere also collected over the two semesters. We collectedinstructional artefacts (e.g., PowerPoint slides, work-sheets, discussion prompts) from two units of instruc-tion, as enacted in three different semesters (onesemester before the case-study period and the two se-mesters of the case-study period). In order to furthercapture team communications, all team emails were ar-chived. In the fall semester this encompassed 41 emailthreads, and in the spring semester this encompassed 64email threads. Email threads could include as few as oneemail from a single sender to the team, or it could in-clude a string of many email communications betweenmultiple senders. Pre- and post-semester semi-structured clinical interviews and/or focus groups werealso conducted with a subset of consentinginstructional-team members. Participation in all inter-views was entirely voluntary.

Data analysisWe conducted multiple rounds of qualitative data ana-lysis, guided by our research questions. Although differ-ent data sources were the primary foci for differentanalyses, immersion in the data from different sourcesinformed our analysis at all stages, and emerging

Table 1 Instructional-team-member roles

Instructional-Team Member

Role Description Semester1: Fall

Semester 2:Spring

Instructor Faculty member responsible for the planning, implementation, and assessment of studentlearning.

Jay Jay/Jenny

Learning Assistants Undergraduate and graduate students who scaffold and support students’ learning by askingprobing questions, pressing for in-depth explanations, guiding student thinking, etc.

Lane, Peter Tay

InstructionalManager

Undergraduate or graduate student who takes on classroom-management responsibilities (e.g.,student group organizer, materials point-person).

Jenny Sarah

Learning Researcher Undergraduate or graduate student who acts as a real-time observer of student thinking in theclassroom by noticing patterns in student ideas and analyzing products of student work. LearningResearchers may also provide pre- or post-implementation feedback on instructional tasks.

Sarah Albert

Description of the roles and responsibilities of Jay’s instructional team members during the case-study period. These specialized roles are a central characteristicof the I-TP instructional-teams model (Kim et al., 2019)


findings were cross-checked with other data sources fordisconfirming or supporting evidence.To build an organizer for analyzing and relating key

events and developments during the case-study period,we used classroom observation notes and classroomaudio files to create a three-tiered timeline. This timelineincluded descriptions of 1) instruction and classroomevents (e.g., unit/topic, activities, highlights of classroomobservation notes), 2) observed changes in approach toinstructional tasks and formative assessments (e.g., “[Jay]adds structure to task in response to student and teamfeedback about confusion”), and 3) changes and majorevents in instructional team development and evolution(e.g., “Impromptu post-class team meeting observedafter this class for reflection and evaluation of how thisinstructional change went”).Using the TCSR as a frame, we then set out to

characterize factors and elements of Jay’s teacher think-ing that motivated instructional reform and influencedthe decisions Jay made throughout her reform efforts.Guided by this aim, we iteratively analyzed interviewtranscripts, FLC observation notes and transcripts, andclass observation notes for relevant emergent themes.We began by independently reading through the dataand making “open notes” about potentially relevant in-stances. Through comparison and discussion of thesenotes, we consolidated notes into intermediate codes orsubthemes. We cross-checked emerging codes/sub-themes against all data sources, for counterevidence oradditional supporting evidence. Finally, we groupedintermediate codes/subthemes into organizing themes.We have included a table presenting an example of thisiterative process for the theme, “Evolving pedagogicaldiscontentment as a motivator for change”, in theSupplementary Materials.To add to our understanding of how Jay’s instructional

practice changed in this time, we performed cross-semester instructional task analyses on two units, usinginstructional artefacts from each unit (e.g., PowerPointslides, worksheets, discussion prompts), audio files andin-class observations (for the two target semesters), andinstructor reflections from interview transcripts. Theseanalyses characterized structural changes to the instruc-tion within those units over the course of three semes-ters (one semester before joining the project and the twotarget semesters). We first constructed an outline ofeach unit in each semester. We then compared activitiesfrom each unit across the three semesters for similaritiesand differences in task design and implementation. Indoing so, we moved between stages of identifying poten-tial similarities and differences in design and/or imple-mentation, and systematically analyzing each semester’sinstructional artefacts from the unit to identify any evi-dence that might challenge the emerging claim (e.g.,

instances of a feature in one semester’s unit tasks thatwas proposed to be absent, or the rarity of a featureacross another semester’s unit tasks when that featurewas proposed to be characteristic).All data collection and analysis were approved by the

institutional review board at our university (IRB1409498345).

ResultsJay’s reform of her teaching practice is a case of evolving,interrelated contextual factors, pedagogical discontent-ment, teacher thinking and enacted practice. Through-out the reform period, Jay’s instructional decision-making was driven and guided by her evolving peda-gogical discontentment and teacher thinking. Her in-structional reform efforts were initially constrained bythe barriers of lack of time and limits to her pedagogicalunderstanding, which were both alleviated with the in-creasing integration of her instructional team into herteacher thinking and enacted practice. Central compo-nents of this integration were increased team communi-cation and greater incorporation of the team intoinstructional planning, design and implementation. Bothof these components were initially spurred by an in-structional crisis leading to acute pedagogical discon-tentment, and reinforced by the positive impacts thatthe team’s increasing contributions had on Jay’s enactedpractice.

Contextual and personal factors that set the stage forreformAs introduced in Case study selection above, there werecontextual and personal factors that initially set the stagefor her reform efforts. Importantly, Jay was a tenuredprofessor, so her job security was not at risk due to set-backs along the way. Moreover, since becoming tenured,Jay had undergone a shift in her responsibilities fromprimarily research to primarily teaching responsibilities.The shift began a few years before the case-study periodand was driven by a combination of factors. Jay had se-cured tenure on the strength of her research productiv-ity, but was losing interest in growing her researchprogram in directions that would advance her career.When two faculty members retired in the same year,Jay’s department needed an instructor to take over twolarge-enrolment courses important to the department.Jay saw this as an opportunity to expand her teaching,which aligned well with her perceived strengths basedon her experience. Later, Jay reflected that, “they had aneed for teaching … [and] I knew I was good at that; theexperiences that I’d been having were good, the studentsresponded well.”


Although she identified as a good instructor, Jay alsobrought a personal perspective of openness to change.In retrospect, Jay reflected,

You know, before you have a shift, you don't knowthere's a shift to be had. See, that's the thing: youdon't know what you don't know … . And if you don'tknow, you can't imagine, until somebody says, "trythis, try this, try this," and, once you do it, thenyou're like, "Oh, this is--there's something here." (Jay,follow-up interview)

Jay’s identification of herself as a good instructor andher openness to new ideas contributed to her willing-ness to reform her instructional practices when sheencountered dissatisfaction with the outcomes of herteaching.

Drivers for engaging in instructional change: pedagogicaldiscontentmentDissatisfaction with student engagementJay had been teaching since 1996, primarily small (< 25students) upper-division and graduate classes. Herteaching practice was through ‘interactive lecture’ inwhich she delivered information through a set of Power-Point slides peppered with Socratic back-and-forth dia-logues with individual students. In 2012 she beganteaching two large-enrolment (~ 150 student) general-education courses, serving majors and non-majors, asdescribed above. It was at this point that Jay became dis-satisfied with the lack of student engagement during herclasses:

And so I realized that in going through this, as I wasdoing my lecturing, and you know, doing kind of thesame sort of thing that the students weren't... theywere, I could just tell that they weren't engaged, Icould read the room and tell that maybe a fewpeople were but not all of them. (Jay, Fall pre-interview)

While the interactive lecture approach generated the de-sired levels of student interest and engagement for herprevious courses, Jay discovered that this method wasunsuccessful in the large-enrolment general-educationcourses she was now teaching. This dissatisfaction withstudent engagement led her to start experimenting withdifferent instructional strategies. First, she began to in-clude non-planned small-scale moments of peerinteraction:

I just thought-, it was just instinctive. I tried kind ofthis ‘talk to your neighbor’, kind of ‘wake up!’[laughs] You know ‘wake up!’ and I got a good--the

energy came back and so I thought ‘oh!’ you know?(Jay, Fall pre-interview)

She noted that her experimentation with peer interac-tions was not driven or guided by formalized profes-sional development, but rather through ‘instinct’, notingthat ‘it wasn’t anything deliberate, it was just a sense forhow to make this a more fun thing’. Motivated by thepositive, desired outcome of increased student engage-ment as assessed by ‘reading the vibe of the room’, Jaybegan to plan collaborative group activities ahead ofclass, remarking that ‘I realized I could make-, I could dobigger things’.A change in the context of Jay’s teaching—from

small, upper-division courses to large, introductoryones—caused a change in the outcomes that she ob-served from her enacted practice. Low levels of stu-dent engagement led Jay to experience a sense ofpedagogical discontentment with her previous inter-active lecture style of instruction. This drove Jay to“instinctively” incorporate impromptu opportunitiesfor students to collaborate with one another anddiscuss course concepts in class. Upon observing animprovement in student engagement, she was encour-aged to adopt a more deliberate approach to incorp-orating those opportunities.

Dissatisfaction with the level of student thinkingBy the time she joined the I-TP, Jay had come to highlyvalue collaborative instructional tasks for their ability toengage students. She was dissatisfied, however, with aperceived lack of success pushing students to higherlevels of thinking. She remarked on this in her first, pre-participation interview:

I don't like having people sitting around shootingthe breeze. I try to, you know, sometimes maybemy question isn't probing enough, maybe it is tooopen-ended so they answer, 'oh yes, I like that' or'I don't like that'. But it's like 'why don't you likethat!?!' So there's some of that kind of stuff that Ican, I could, you know, improve. (Jay, Fall pre-interview)

Jay experienced her dissatisfaction with students’lack of higher-level thinking as discontentment withthe types of questions that she asked. She was awarethat her limited pedagogical knowledge was con-straining her ability to elicit the types of thinkingthat she wanted her students to practice. This ac-knowledgement, and the related pedagogical discon-tentment, left Jay open to undergoing continuedprofessional development and significantly redesign-ing her course.


Factors shaping instructional change: teacher thinkingCentral elements of Jay’s teacher thinking shaped howshe engaged in reform—particularly when her enactedpractice failed to support the resulting goals. In particu-lar, Jay’s instructional priorities related to student en-gagement and critical thinking, as well as her view of thenature of the course content, were important factors inhow she approached instructional reform.

Importance of student engagement and student-interest-driven instructionAs explored in the section above, Jay highly valued stu-dent engagement, to the extent that a lack of such en-gagement drove her early instructional reform efforts.Prior to her involvement in the I-TP, Jay’s investment instudent engagement led her to explore Ken Bain’s workin using student-interests as drivers for learning in col-lege classrooms (Bain, 2011). Jay was so inspired by thisconcept that she re-created a unit in her graduate-levelenvironmental science course (10 students) to test theseideas.

“I was applying the Ken Bain idea of having stu-dents-, having it connect to their own personal inter-est. Their questions. And the students brought in[research] papers that they were interested in. [ … ] Idrove them then, into the papers. [ … ] And therecame a point where all of the students got stuck onsome universal features of chemistry. Colloidalchemistry. Particle chemistry. That was the start.They all came and were like ‘I need to know this be-cause it’s important to me’. It was important becausethey brought it in, and they had a personal invest-ment in understanding that paper.” (Jay, Post-StudyReflection Interview)

Exposure to Bain’s ideas and this positive experiencewith her graduate-level course led Jay to incorporate acommitment to student ownership through student-generated questions as a driver for student engagementinto her beliefs about teaching.

Importance of critical thinkingIn addition to student engagement, Jay highly valuedstudents’ ability to critically analyze information posedin the media as well as their own preconceptions aboutenvironmental issues. Thus, she wanted students in hercourses to have the opportunity to evaluate differentsides of an argument and develop data-driven evaluationskills. For instance, in discussing her instructional prior-ities going into the I-TP, she remarked,

So one of my main goals is to get them to take thingsapart. [ … ] The whole class is really about getting

past the news stories. So getting them to question thethings we see in the news all the time. But they havea lot of preconceived notions you know, just by beinga human here. So I try to come from a science pointof view. (Jay, Fall pre-interview)

Jay’s prioritization of students’ critical-thinking skills and‘science point of view’ shaped the instructional decisionsthat she made and how she evaluated the success of herinstruction.

Non-linear nature of the course contentFinally, Jay’s beliefs about the nature of her disciplinesignificantly impacted her approach to teaching contentin the course. She articulated this view at the beginningof her I-TP participation:

So these classes are not, like chemistry classes. Insome ways those seem easier to me because it's like'ok', you know, 'do this'. ‘You've got these problems'.And then the next thing you do is 'this' and you do itthat way. This is really … this is environmental sci-ence. I could start anywhere in the book and go any-where I want to. So it's a little different. I thinkthere's a, a completely... I don't know, it's a differentanimal. (Jay, Fall pre-interview)

Jay viewed the nature of content material in environ-mental science as non-linear in comparison to otherfields of study such as chemistry, in which she earnedher PhD. Thus, she did not see herself as being con-strained to a particular content sequence, a view thatprofoundly impacted her instructional decisions as sheset out to redesign her course.Although Jay was committed to reforming her instruc-

tional practices and redesigning her introductory course,she encountered barriers in tackling certain areas of re-form. Some of these barriers were noted by Jay as chal-lenges early in the reform process, some wereacknowledged by her retrospectively, and others wereevident in our observational analysis. We discuss themost significant of these barriers below.

Barriers and challengesLack of timeA significant contextual barrier that Jay noted early onwas a lack of time. This is consistent with the literatureon faculty-reported barriers to reform, and is not sur-prising given Jay’s professional responsibilities (at thispoint she was routinely teaching three courses a semes-ter and maintaining a scaled-down research program).As an example, she discussed the time barrier in termsof the difficulty she was facing using in-class studentwork to assess students’ understanding and progress.


[W] hen I could actually read them all [in-class stu-dent work], or have a look at them, I could get a lotof insight into what was going on. I often didn't havetime. The TA would look at stuff, [but] I was on tothe next thing, you know? Just because of the sheervolume of stuff coming in. (Jay, Fall pre-interview)

She knew that students’ collaborative products offeredassessment opportunities but was struggling to managethe large volume of information generated by differentstudent groups in the available time. The lack of time todevote to these types of activities limited Jay’s ability toenact elements of what she recognized as best instruc-tional practices.

View of instructional role as independent ‘lone instructor’Another significant barrier that Jay encountered early inher reform efforts was her own view of the role of theinstructor as an independent actor. She came torecognize this as a barrier later. Reflecting on this at theend of the study period, she remarked that:

You know, everything I had seen leading up to any ofthis was, you know, just the instructor did all ofthese things. And it just didn’t-, the fact that it wasoverwhelming and unmanageable just seemed to bea problem that I was having. You know? I justneeded to manage better. (Jay, Spring post-interview)

Because she viewed it as her responsibility to single-handedly manage every component of instruction, shesaw the challenges that she encountered as resultingfrom a personal failure to ‘manage better.’ This lone-instructor view limited her ability to recognize and relyon others as a resource.

Beginning stages of pedagogical knowledge developmentAnother barrier to Jay’s early reform efforts was that herideal teaching practice extended beyond her currentpedagogical knowledge. As an expert in the discipline,her knowledge of the content area was high, and she hadmany years of experience successfully teaching advancedstudents in the discipline. The radical shift from teach-ing small upper-division and graduate courses to largeintroductory undergraduate courses, however, necessi-tated a new approach for her. This can be seen, for ex-ample, in her struggle to get the students in herintroductory course as deeply engaged with thinkingcritically about the material as she would like (discussedabove). At this point, her limited experience with stu-dents at this level, compared with her extensive experi-ence with upper-division and graduate students and herown depth of expertise in the content area, made it diffi-cult for her to predict how students in her introductory

course would engage (or not engage) with course ac-tivities. Jay was also early in the process of developingpedagogical tools suitable for large introductorycourses in general. For example, Jay was initially re-sistant to the idea of establishing, aligning, and com-municating learning objectives. While she was willingto engage with activities centered around learning ob-jectives during FLC meetings, it was clear that shedid not yet see the value in integrating them into herpractice. Jay was more invested in the potential offormative assessment, but she was also aware that shelacked strategies for making students’ thinking visiblein real time. When asked in her pre-participationinterview about how she collected information aboutstudent thinking while groups worked on in-classtasks, Jay laughed and replied, ‘No clue!’By the beginning of the case-study period, Jay had

‘bought in’ to the ideas of student-centered, evidence-based instruction, and held beliefs and goals consist-ent with this in her commitments to student engage-ment and higher-level thinking. Contextual factors,personal factors, and elements of her teacher think-ing, however, presented barriers that caused her tostruggle to effectively operationalize them in the de-sign, implementation, and assessment of classroomactivities. As we will argue below, however, the frus-tration and disappointment encountered as she strug-gled with these challenges created an opportunity forthe development of an effective instructional teamthat ultimately played an important role in Jay’s suc-cessful instructional reform.

Key developments in the caseUpon joining the I-TP project, Jay made the decision tooverhaul her Introduction to Environmental Science classin a radical way. Her approach to course revision wasdriven by her prioritization of student engagement, andher conviction that meaningful engagement stemmedfrom students’ interest in and ownership of the contentstudied. In order to allow for students’ interests andquestions to become the primary drivers of the topicsstudied, she decided to stop using the textbook and thePower Point lecture notes that had guided her teachingup to that point. In place of the highly-structured inter-active lecture that she had previously used throughoutthe course, Jay opened the fall semester with a series ofactivities intended to give students the space to generatequestions that would drive instruction for the first partof the course. Enacting this series of activities, known asthe ‘mind-mapping task’, presented significant challengesthat became critical in the evolution of Jay’s instructionalpractice. Importantly, it served as a catalyst for Jay’s reli-ance on her instructional team as a valued resource.


Consolidation of the team and transformation of Jay’sviews of instructor/team rolesAs a first activity in the ‘mind-mapping task’, Jay askedstudents to answer the question shown in Fig. 1 usingcolor-coded ABCD cards to provide their responses. Shethen asked students to use the information gathered inbuilding their answer to develop a mind map. Thesemaps were open-structured concept maps in which stu-dents had to connect relevant concepts and ideas withsupport and justification from sources. This activity wasintended to model how to answer a socially relevant en-vironmental science question using a tool for organizingideas.In a next step, Jay asked students to come up with any

question they had about environmental science and ex-plore it using the mind-mapping tool. This launched theclass into what became a two-week-long activity. Con-sistent with her beliefs about the importance of ideas be-ing student-driven, Jay deliberately limited instructorguidance and structure as a way to avoid hindering stu-dents’ idea-generation and inquiry. As enacted, the resultof this decision was that the presentation of the mind-mapping task lacked clear objectives and expectations,without guidelines for what types of questions wereappropriate. It was also unclear what type of specificproduct students were expected to generate, or withwhom—while students were first encouraged to brain-storm ideas on whiteboards with their tablemates, theywere not given instructions on whether to work indi-vidually or in groups, or whether a group should choosea common question to investigate. The lack of structureand clearly defined objectives or expectations resulted inwidespread confusion, frustration, and uneasiness amongstudents.Students’ discontentment was felt by both Jay and her

instructional team. Jay expressed dismay at the

difference between her intentions—to engage the stu-dents in a challenging task that would allow them topursue their interests—and students’ observed frustra-tion. Her distress at this outcome, however, promptedJay to be more open to her instructional team as a re-source for improving instructional planning and imple-mentation. At the same time, the team members’observations of students’ frustration motivated them toshare their own ideas and feedback. This began a shift inthe role of the instructional team from relatively passive‘classroom helpers’ to active collaborators.The shift in the role of the instructional team could be

seen in the communication between Jay and the team.At the beginning of the semester, prompted by the I-TPFLC facilitator, Jay had established one-way pre-classemail communications to inform her team of the up-coming events of the day, but did not establish an ex-pectation that they would provide feedback. This wasconsistent with her initial view of the instructor as an in-dependent decision-maker and instructional designer. Inthe second week of the semester, prompted by the crisisthey saw unfolding in the classroom, members of the in-structional team began responding to these emails withideas, suggestions, and recommended modifications toprovide students with more guidance. The pre-classemails quickly evolved into a community forum for thecollaborative design of the daily instructional tasks andthe delegation of instructional responsibilities duringtask implementation. In addition to expanded emailcommunication, a new line of communication wasopened when team members began informally meetingwith Jay after class to provide feedback on the day’s ac-tivities and make suggestions for moving forward. By theseventh day of the mind-mapping activity, these post-class meetings had become unofficially established as atime for the team to reflect and plan together.

Fig. 1 Mind-mapping instructional task initial prompt


Moving forward, these lines of communication becamea norm for Jay and her instructional team, and an im-portant part of Jay’s instructional practice. At the end ofthe case-study period, Jay reflected on this shift and de-scribed her approach to establishing open communica-tion and feedback as a team expectation from the startof each semester:

I mean, [prior to the case study period] we reallydidn't have a team concept. We were a group ofpeople, but I was clearly the one just coming to classand going, ‘Okay, here we go!’ [ … ] [N] ow, it's likewe're all in it together, you know? [ … ] I'll start rightoff with that [in future semesters]. [ … ] I'll do it byexample by sending the stuff early and saying, ‘Okay,here’s what we’re gonna do, please give me feedback.’[ … ] If I don’t get feedback I’ll go, ‘Okay, what isyour feedback?’ I mean, I know how to do that be-cause I know now what I want as far as engagingthe team which will then engage the classroom. (Jay,Spring post-interview)

Jay experienced a shift from viewing herself as the loneinstructor, solely responsible for planning instruction, tothe leader of a collaborative team that is ‘all in it to-gether.’ She and her team opened lines of communica-tion that invited the team members into instructionalplanning and reflection as collaborators. As the instruc-tional team became more involved in the planning andreflection stages of instruction, team members becamemore engaged in the implementation of instructionwithin the classroom, as well. Jay reflected on this con-nection to a colleague during an FLC meeting in the sec-ond semester of her participation, remarking that theteam

wanted to provide feedback and that they also gaveme positive feedback about actually sending [instruc-tional plans] ahead of time. And I also noticed thatthe result was that in class they weren’t standingand looking at me trying to figure out what was hap-pening next. They already knew. (Jay, Spring FLCMeeting)

Similar to the shift that Jay experienced in her thinkingabout her and the team’s roles in planning instruction,Jay came to integrate her team into her thinking aboutwhat happened in the classroom. Whereas she notedthat, previously, she ‘didn’t really use them in the classin any way other than to pick up papers,’ a change thatshe had noticed in her own teacher thinking was

thinking of tasks as something the team is going todo, not something I'm gonna do and they're gonna

help out with. Like, it really is something that we areall gonna be participating in. If I--trying to makesure that I'm just, I'm just leading, you know? I'mnot trying to think of it in terms of me doing every-thing. (Jay, Spring post-interview)

Both in and out of the classroom, Jay came to think ofher team members as valued contributors to her instruc-tional practice.The challenges encountered in the mind-mapping

task, and Jay and the team’s response to them, triggereda transformation in the instructional team’s role and dy-namics. This, in turn, resulted in a lasting change in Jay’sview of the roles of the instructor and team. Jay’s newopenness to her team’s active and meaningful involve-ment in different aspects of instructional planning, im-plementation, and assessment was critical to advancingthe transformation of her teaching practices.

Increased reliance on team and lowered time barrierThe development of an increasingly integrated and func-tional instructional team encouraged Jay to share anddelegate practical and cognitive responsibilities. As herview shifted from that of lone instructor to coordinatedteam, so, too, did her enacted practice:

Now [the team is] included. It’s the assumption thatwe are all in this together. And I don’t have to haveall the answers. I don’t have to have it all workedout. Because it’s a team! It’s a team! (Jay, Springpost-interview)

Classroom observations and analysis of the team’s emailcommunication support this impression: although Jaydid occasionally ‘fall back’ into trying to attempt to man-age independently in the classroom, her team was in-creasingly involved in both instructional planning andimplementation. This lowered the time barrier, freeingup Jay to devote more of her time and energy to reflecton and develop her teaching practice:

I basically took the role of doing everything last se-mester [before the reform]. [ … ] Many things thatI’m doing now were, oh you know, maybe placeswhere I thought ‘oh man! [I could try this]. Youknow? But I had no solution, or even enough time tothink about the fact that it was a problem! (Jay, Fallmid-semester interview)

Because she was no longer ‘doing everything’ now thatthe team was handling some of the time-consuming re-sponsibilities of instruction, Jay was more able torecognize, reflect about, and act on places where her in-struction could improve.


Deepening pedagogical knowledge and evolution ofenacted practiceJay’s shift towards a ‘team concept’ and the integrationof the team into her teaching created a unique contextfor Jay to expand her pedagogical knowledge. As dis-cussed above, the lowering of the time barrier as course-management and -planning responsibilities were sharedwith and delegated to others bought Jay more time andenergy to devote to developing her practice. Beyond this,however, the team contributed to an environment inwhich Jay was both encouraged and supported in devel-oping her pedagogical knowledge. This occurred throughdifferent mechanisms. For one, certain team membersacted as cognitive partners, providing feedback and sug-gestions from different points of view and pressing herto reflect on and justify her instructional decisions.Moreover, her desire to clearly communicate her in-structional goals to the team further pushed her to ar-ticulate her motives and more deliberately align themwith specific elements of her instruction. In this way, Jaywas both given space and support to reflectively developher thinking about teaching, and pressure to reflectthose changes in her enacted practice.Because of their diverse roles and experiences, instruc-

tional team members pressed Jay for reflection and pro-vided feedback in different ways. For example, Jennyprimarily provided feedback on task structure and learn-ing goals in the planning and reflection spaces. Whenasked about her role, Jenny noted that she viewed herselfas a challenger, saying, ‘Another thing I do […] is ask“what would you like to get out of this?”.’ On the otherhand, Sarah tended to provide more specific feedback ontask design and implementation:

After class she [Sarah] always provides good feed-back, as far as whatever is going on. [ …] If I sentout the learning objectives-, if I’ve got my deal andI’ve sent out the learning objectives, and she [Sarah]says ‘have you thought about this?’ Yeah, that’sVERY helpful. (Jay, Fall mid-semester interview)

A significant impact on Jay’s pedagogical understandingand instructional practice was the development of herappreciation and skill for incorporating structures toscaffold instruction while retaining elements of student-driven inquiry. She retained her commitment to foster-ing student interest through ownership, her view of theflexibility that the ‘nonlinear’ nature the disciplineafforded, and the importance of students critically evalu-ating claims and perspectives about environmental sci-ence. At the same time, she came to see a certain degreeof structure as necessary for supporting productive stu-dent engagement in the course. This can be seen in theevolution of the example unit focused on air quality

(Tables 2 and 3). Prior to her participation in the pro-ject, Jay taught this unit within a single class period asan interactive lecture punctuated with student activities.Her discontentment with this kind of instructionprompted her to adopt a very different approach as shebegan project participation. As discussed above, in thefirst semester of project participation Jay expanded thisunit into a multi-week open inquiry, reflecting elementsof her teacher thinking around the importance ofstudent-driven questions and her belief that structureinhibited student ownership. Her use of learning objec-tives was pro-forma, described by her as ‘an after-thought’, rather than used as a pedagogical tool. Thelack of structure and clearly-stated learning goals motiv-ating course activities limited formative-assessment op-portunities. As her team became more central to herinstructional implementation, Jay came to see learningobjectives as a useful tool for communicating with herteam about her goals in the classroom:

I learned a bit more about doing the learning objec-tives during the semester. And just because I have itin my head, it really doesn’t help them [the team] ifit’s just in my head. And it would be more helpfulfor them to see kind of what we’re talking about,where I-, where I envision to go. (Jay, Fall post-interview)

Over time, with her team’s feedback and collaboration,and her own observations and reflection, Jay began toincreasingly accept learning objectives as a pedagogicaltool. She discussed this in a FLC meeting during her sec-ond semester of participation:

I think before it was just an afterthought, the learn-ing objectives … but when they started to challengeme to assess what was going on, then I really had tomake it match. First, I had to generate [the learningobjectives] and then I had to make them match up[with instruction and assessment]. (Jay, Spring FLCmeeting)

Beyond viewing learning objectives as a way to commu-nicate with her team, she had come to see them as away to align her instruction with her learning goals.Moreover, this was driven by a push to assess whetheror not students were meeting those goals. By the secondsemester of participation, we see this change in viewreflected in the design and implementation of the airquality unit (Tables 2 and 3). Learning objectives wereemerging as an important part of Jay’s instructional de-sign that helped her build a more structured, scaffoldedguided-inquiry unit with more clearly-stated expecta-tions. She also used a variety of tools to assess students’


thinking and progress towards those objectives, such aswhiteboards, ABCD cards, and whole-class discussions.Notably, in addition to relying on members of her teamas co-creators in planning instruction, Jay also came torely on members of her team to carry out real-time for-mative assessment of student thinking during class. Inan interview between the two semesters, she describedthis:

I think I have to have someone else [listening to stu-dent reasoning in class]. … I thought, ‘Oh, I can lis-ten to what [students] are saying [in class], youknow? … .But I realized I had no—I really didn'tknow how to distil it into anything that I couldactually use. (Jay, Spring post-interview)

Jay embraced the importance of formative-assessmentwithin her class, but became increasingly aware that she

was limited in her own ability to assess student thinkingin real time. Because of her acceptance of her team as aninstrumental part of her instructional practice, however,she was able to rely on them to support different typesof formative assessment.

Epilogue: evidence of meaningful and lasting changeAlthough this study was primarily an investigation intothe factors influencing Jay’s reform efforts, we were alsointerested in whether there was evidence of meaningfuland lasting change in Jay’s case. We conducted a follow-up interview with Jay 3 years after the end of the case-study period. The one-hour, semi-structured interviewprompted Jay to reflect on her past and current instruc-tional practices and use of an instructional team. In theinterview, Jay expressed a view of her team that indi-cated that her teacher thinking about the team’s rolehad, indeed, undergone a lasting change:

Table 2 Evolving instructional task structure for the Air Quality Unit

Course: Fundamentals of Environmental Science and Sustainability

Content Topic: The Atmosphere: Air Quality and Pollution

Semester Pre-I-TP Participation Reform Semester 1Fall

Reform Semester 2Spring

• Interactive lecture: Driving Question Student Poll:Students asked to vote on whether they think airquality in the US is getting better, worse orstaying the same.

• Task 1: Data Exploration Activity: Individualexploration of Air Quality Index (AQI website).

• Interactive lecture: Instructor defines relevantterms

• Interactive lecture: Instructor presentsfoundational topics related to ozone depletion.

• Task 2: Graphical Representation Activity:Students asked to graph the size of the ozonehole as a function of time while watching ananimation.

• Task 1: Mind-Map Activity: Students indi-vidually come up with questions about airquality to explore through ‘mind-mapping’.

• Students introduced to a mind mapbuilding online program.

• Students perform a peer-evaluation ofmind maps.

• Students generate potential quizquestions based on their mind maps.

• Interactive lecture: Instructor introducesissues of ozone depletion and climatechange.

• Assessment: In-class, open note mind mapand group quiz.

• Task 1: Small Group Whiteboard Activity: Studentsindividually explore Air Quality Index (AQIwebsite) to find data, create a list of observationsand questions on whiteboards. Team collectsobservations/questions and funnels to Instructorfor post-task discussion.

• Task 2: Small Group Whiteboard Activity: Studentsprovided with categories of air pollutants andasked to collaboratively investigate sources ofthese pollutants.

• Assessment: Individual in-class quiz.• Interactive lecture: Students come to class withan article on ozone and a question they wouldlike to have answered through interactive lecture.

• Watch videos: Reproduce the chemistry of ozoneformation and depletion from videos on groupwhiteboards.

• Task 3: Question Exploration: Planned andimpromptu questions for exploration using onlineresources, voting using ABCD cards, and whole-class discussion.

• Task 4: Topic Sorting Worksheet: Studentsprovided with a word bank of topics and 4 largecategories, asked to work in groups.

• Task 5: Identifying Misinformation Whole-ClassActivity: Students provided with 4 pictures andcaptions from ‘reliable’ sources and asked to pre-dict how misinformation may be presented.

• Task 6: Potential Quiz Question Generation:Students work in groups to generate quizquestions, then peer review other groups’questions, for summative assessment.

• Assessment: In-class quiz: Individual then groupcomponent. Peer grading of quiz during class.

A breakdown of the structure of an instructional unit about air quality for three semesters. The semester before the case-study period (Semester Pre-I-TPParticipation) the unit was carried out within one 50-min class session. In the first semester of the case-study period (Reform Semester 1), a low-structure mind-mapping task was conducted over nine 50-min class sessions. In the second semester of the case-study period (Reform Semester 2), an increase in structure andinstructional strategies supported students’ generation and investigation of questions of interest. In this semester, the unit was carried out over eight 50-minclass sessions


One of the things I realized is that I can do morewith the team than I can by myself. And just, youknow, that I'm actually--not even just better. I canactually do more and so I become larger and we be-come larger as a unit. (Jay, follow-up interview)

The practices associated with this shift in view had alsopersisted. Following up on this remark, Jay described thecoordination of her team during class activities—“if Ihad to do those [things] myself, it would not, it wouldnot be as good a product. So that’s sort of a low-levelway to think about it, just the technical aspects [of run-ning the class]”—and went on to talk about their creativecontributions—“But you could upsize that to anything,right? You can upsize that to the learning objectives, tothe activities, you know. They have this whole perspec-tive to the execution of the activities.” Jay had continuedthe practice of sending plans and activities to her teamahead of class meetings, both to facilitate coordinationduring implementation, and to invite their input. Shehad also continued to rely on her team for formative as-sessment, commenting that “you cannot, if you’re the in-structor, see all that stuff … I actually cannot get that

information without these people.” Notably, Jay contin-ued to integrate and rely on an instructional team in herteaching practice beyond the term of the particular teamthat was so integral to her initial drastic reform efforts.At the time of this interview, for instance, Jay’s team wascomposed of five undergraduate students (she had notbeen assigned a co-instructor or a graduate assistant forthe semester), all of whom were new to teaching andworking with Jay.Additionally, we characterized core features of our in-

class task analysis (instructional approach, degree ofstructure, use of learning objectives, and use of formativeassessment) in instructional artefacts from two semestersafter the case-study period. The instructional approach(guided inquiry), degree of structure (moderate) and useof formative assessment (high, structured, planned andflexible) were maintained from the second semester ofthe case study. Learning objectives were more consist-ently integrated throughout the unit by this point thanin even the second semester of the case-study period, anobservation consistent with Jay’s remarks in the follow-up interview on the evolution of her understanding oflearning objectives as a pedagogical tool:

Table 3 Alignment of key personal factors, elements of teacher thinking, and enacted instruction in the Air Quality Unit

Variable Pre-I-TP participation Reform Semester 1 Fall Reform Semester 2 Spring

Personal Factor

Pedagogicalstrategies

Limited, traditional ➔Developing, ‘active learning’

Developing, evidence-based Developing, evidence-based, ‘backwards design’

Resource-seeking andlearning efforts

Faculty learning community (FLC)participation (not associated withI-TP)Classroom experimentationLiterature (i.e., Bain, 2011)

I-TP participationInstructional team emerges as resource(co-constructors, co-implementers)

I-TP participationInstructional team acts as resource (co-constructors,co-implementers)

Teacher thinking

View ofinstructor role

Independent developer, leadimplementer

Independent developer, leadimplementer → Team leader

Team leader

View ofinstructionalteam role

Limited classroom helpers Limited classroom helpers → Co-constructors/ Team members

Co-constructors/Team members

View oflearningmotivators/supports

Student interest, activity (e.g.,opportunities to discuss) driveengagement

Student interest and ownership driveengagement; structure stifles studentautonomy

Student interest and ownership drive engagement;some structure necessary to support productiveengagement

View of content Process-oriented, nonlinear Process-oriented, nonlinear Process-oriented, nonlinear

Enacted instruction in target unit (Air Quality Unit)

Instructionalapproach

Interactive lecture Open inquiry Guided inquiry

Degree ofstructure

High Low Moderate

Use of learningobjectives

None Pro forma/ ‘afterthought’ Developing integration into design

Use offormativeassessment

Low, informal, opportunistic Low, informal, opportunistic High, structured, planned and flexible


It took me forever to get me to understand thatlearning objectives are not a bad thing, you know?Because I always felt like [they were] restraining meor something … [Now] I look back at my old slidesets and they just start with like a graph or some-thing, and it's like, “Oh, that must be before [the re-form] … ” and I'm like, “Why would I just have thatas my first [slide]?!”

These observations indicate the persistence of Jay’s shiftin practice, and support that Jay’s growing competenceenacting that practice, as opposed to a reversion to herprevious, more “traditional” practices, is responsible forthe recovery seen in students’ perceived effectiveness ofcourse activities.Finally, to address whether students’ experiences of

the course had changed over the multi-semester processof reform, we collected students’ responses to teacher-course evaluations (TCEs) for the two semesters prior tothe case-study period, the two semesters of the case-study period, and the two semesters following the case-study period. We did not collect TCE responses afterthat time because survey items were altered in future se-mesters, preventing direct comparisons. We found thatstudents’ perceptions of the effectiveness of in-class ac-tivities (the primary target of Jay’s reform efforts)showed a pattern characteristic of major reform, fallingdrastically at the outset of Jay’s reform efforts and thenrecovering over a few semesters to reach a new high (in-cluded in the Supplemental Materials).Since the case-study period, Jay has received a Prov-

ost Award for Innovation in Teaching recognizing theresults of the reform effort described in this study.She has also become a leader in teaching on campus,including serving as a Fellow and Chair of a college-level Academy for Teaching Excellence, which ad-vances the educational mission of the college throughmentorship, workshops, and recognition of excellencein teaching.

DiscussionBuy-in for active, collaborative, and evidence-basedteaching practices is only one step in transforming in-structors’ perspective and practice. It is essential tounderstand not only what it takes to initially decide tomove away from lecture-only teaching practices, but thefactors that can influence change and aid in navigatingbarriers during the complex and challenging transform-ation process. By closely investigating change as it oc-curs, we can better understand the complexity ofengaging in instructional reform after the initial ‘buy-in’stage of evidence-based teaching adoption, as instructorsbuild expertise and navigate large-scale transformationsin their instructional perspectives and practice.

A teacher-centred dynamic systems approachA key insight behind the TCSR model is that it treatsinstructional reform as taking place within a systemcentred around the teacher (Gess-Newsome et al.,2003; Woodbury & Gess-Newsome, 2002). Our ana-lysis of Jay’s case points to the power of taking ateacher-centred dynamic systems approach. By its na-ture, reform entails changes to the system—changesthat do not necessarily move the system directly fromone stable configuration to another. Jay’s case is an il-lustration of the complexity that can characterize theevolving interactions between the dynamic elementsof the system: contextual factors, personal factors, ele-ments of teacher thinking, and elements of enactedpractice. For example, although certain elements ofJay’s teacher thinking—such as her view of the discip-linary content as nonlinear—remained stable through-out the case-study period, the sources of thepedagogical discontentment that drove her engage-ment in reform evolved in response to the changingoutcomes of her instructional practice. Meanwhile,the influence of Jay’s instructional team on her in-structional practice evolved with the shift in herteacher thinking about the roles of herself and herteam—a shift that occurred in response to experi-ences shaped by consequences of her instructionalpractice.Applying the TCSR as part of a teacher-centered

dynamic systems approach gave us a tool for under-standing the critical role that Jay’s instructional teamplayed in shaping her reform efforts. Importantly, be-cause Jay’s instructional team was embedded andinvested in the day-to-day operations of the particularcourse being reformed, instructional team memberswere uniquely positioned to materially support Jay’sefforts with specific actions and feedback in responseto the changing circumstances. The role of the teamevolved in concert with developments in Jay’s teacherthinking and instructional practice, as she carried anexpanding view of her team into the development ofmore sophisticated pedagogical strategies andapproaches.Moreover, we saw that, despite her voluntary partici-

pation in the I-TP, the extent and nature of Jay’s ultim-ate reliance on her instructional team was more reactive,opportunistic, and necessity-driven than intentional andpremeditated. Viewing an instructor as a responsiveagent acting in real time in reaction to each moment’sdemands, perceptions, barriers, resources, and sources ofdissatisfaction may speak to a reason why even well-designed and intensive “one-and-done” professional de-velopment experiences are unlikely to have profoundand lasting impacts on many instructors’ practices(Ebert-May et al., 2011).


Jay’s team evolved elements of a community of practicePrevious studies have demonstrated the potential powerof embedding others into the process of course reform(e.g., Czajka & McConnell, 2016; Gess-Newsome et al.,2003; Henderson et al., 2009). Jay’s case is distinct in thatmembers of her instructional team were not expert otherspositioned as mentors to Jay, who was senior to them interms of position and experience. Although they did notbring a high degree of formal expertise, the different teammembers did bring unique perspectives and a social com-munity context to Jay’s engagement in the reform process.As the instructional team developed shared goals andexperimented together with new pedagogical strategies,they developed elements of a community of practice(Wenger, 1998, 2012), resulting in a rich collaboration thateffectively distributed the cognitive and material workloadof instructional design and implementation.In a community of practice, individuals within the

community share an overarching goal and an under-standing of the tools, strategies and procedures with/inwhich they engage while pursuing that goal. Different in-dividuals within the community are recognized as bring-ing unique skills, knowledge, and experience to thatpursuit. Thus, individuals within such a community par-ticipate in a collaborative practice that relies on the con-tributions and interactions of and between the differentmembers, who occupy and are recognized for their di-verse roles within the community (Wenger, 1998, 2012).Although we are not making the argument here thatJay’s team meets all of the criteria of a community ofpractice as defined in the literature, we wish to draw at-tention to ways in which elements of a community ofpractice arose in this case, and how those elements im-pacted Jay’s reform efforts.

Change persisted and positively impacted students’perceptionsThrough her involvement in the I-TP, Jay had access toresources and different types of supports that promptedher to constantly reflect on her practice and likely facili-tated the implementation of instructional changes. Theprogress that she made in her teaching and in herconceptualization of and reliance on her instructionalteam seemed to have persisted in the absence of projectsupport. There is also evidence that students’ perceptionsof the effectiveness of Jay’s instruction significantly in-creased, surpassing those expressed prior to and duringher involvement in the project. These findings suggest thatobserved changes and their positive impacts were not amere artifact of conditions enabled by the project.

LimitationsThe generalizability of our findings is limited by thecase-study approach followed in our investigation. The

personal and contextual characteristics of the observedinstructor and her instructional team may have beenquite distinct from those of other instructors within andoutside our institution. Nevertheless, Jay may be consid-ered a representative case of tenured faculty who experi-ence discontentment in their teaching practice and havethe freedom, disposition, and support to implementchange. Our qualitative analysis thus highlights import-ant factors and issues in need of further investigation tobetter understand the role that instructional teams, orother forms of collaborative teaching, can play in enab-ling educational reform and advancing the professionaldevelopment of college instructors. We also recognizethat our methods of data collection, that involved real-time observation of the actions and conversations ofstudy participants, may have affected their behaviors,and thus impacted the validity and reliability of ourfindings.

ConclusionsImplications for reform and professional developmentefforts in higher educationThe results of our study highlight the major positive im-pacts that instructional teams can have not only onimplementing evidence-based teaching practices inhigher education but also in fostering the professionaldevelopment of college instructors. Although aspects ofJay’s case are unique, many of the benefits that contrib-uted to her course reform have been noted by other I-TP participant instructors who have reported smootherimplementation and increased in-class team coordin-ation; greater support for responsive teaching and for-mative assessment; and support for task design andrevision through feedback from multiple perspectives.They also describe having greater trust in and relianceon their teams, which have become more integrated intotheir instructional practice, affording them more timeand cognitive energy to devote to the creative demandsof instruction (Kim et al., 2019).The incorporation of LAs to support active learning in

large-enrollment courses has become a widespread prac-tice in the US (Goertzen et al., 2011; Jardine &Friedman, 2017; Otero et al., 2010; Talbot et al., 2015).In our study, we observed the potential benefits of spe-cializing and diversifying the roles that some LAs play inan instructional team by supporting classroom manage-ment, task design and evaluation, and formative assess-ment activities. Our findings suggest that such aninstructional team, and likely other similar structuresthat enable collaborative teaching approaches, createtime and opportunities for instructors to pay closer at-tention to student thinking in their classrooms, reflecton the impact of diverse instructional activities on


student learning, and design and implement interven-tions focused on student learning.Our results also point to potential indicators of pro-

gress in college instructors’ conceptualization, buy-in,and implementation of reformed educational practices.In our case, we saw instructor’s motivations for changemove from discontentment with the level of students’engagement to discontentment with the nature, level,and visibility of student thinking during classroom activ-ities. This change was facilitated by interactions withmembers of instructional team specialized in formativeassessment. We also saw a shift from doubtful and sur-face adoption of reformed practices (e.g., making learn-ing objectives explicit) to meaningful implementationinside and outside the classroom. This change was fos-tered by the need to better guide and facilitate the workof the instructional team, and the constant feedback thatthe team provided on the design and impact of class-room tasks. Paying attention to these types of shifts incollege instructors’ motivations for change and actual“buy-in” for reformed practices may help better evaluatethe impact of different professional development effortsin higher education.

AbbreviationsI-TP: Instructional-Teams Project; FLC: Faculty Learning Community;LAs: Learning Assistants

Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s43031-021-00036-9.

Additional file 1. Supplementary Document 1: Instructional-Teams Pro-ject informational flyer. Supplementary Document 2: Outline of FacultyLearning Community activities. Supplementary Table 1: Example of emer-gent theme identification. Supplementary Fig. 1: TCE Evaluations of effect-iveness of in-class activities.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Jay (pseudonym) and her instructional teammembers for their involvement in our project. Without their interest, effort,and enthusiasm to improve opportunities for learning in the classroom, thisstudy would not exist.

Authors’ contributionsKMS and VT contributed to study design. KMS, SDH, JJ, YAK and JCcontributed to data collection. KMS and SDH carried out data analysis withsupport and feedback from JJ, VT and JEC. SDH, KMS and VT prepared themanuscript with support and feedback from JEC, LKE, PB and YAK. KMS, JJ,YAK, JC, LKE, PB and VT contributed to design and implementation of the I-TP program that created the context in which this study was conducted. Allauthors read and approved the final manuscript.

FundingThe Instructional-Teams Model project is supported by the National ScienceFoundation –.Improving Undergraduate STEM Education, DUE-1626531.

Availability of data and materialsThe data set created and analyzed for this study is available from thecorresponding author on reasonable request.

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participateAll data collection and analyses were approved by the University of ArizonaInstitutional Review Board (IRB 1409498345). Under the IRB approved studydesign, all study participants gave their consent to have their data includedin the study and resulting publications.

Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest or competinginterests.

Author details1Office of Instruction and Assessment, University of Arizona, 101, PO Box210070, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. 2Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. 3Department of Environmental Science,University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. 4College of Veterinary Medicine,University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. 5Department of Chemical andEnvironmental Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.

Received: 17 February 2021 Accepted: 13 August 2021

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