Transforming the teaching of thousands: Promoting evidence-based practices at scale

Staff of the Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning have contributed a chapter to Transforming Institutions: Accelerating Systemic Change in Higher Education. This newly published book offers perspectives for advancing change initiatives in higher education and STEM education.

In their chapter, “Transforming the teaching of thousands: Promoting evidence-based practices at scale,” Director Kay Halasek, Research Faculty Fellow Andrew Heckler, and Associate Director Melinda Rhodes-DiSalvo describe, analyze and reflect upon implementing the Drake Institute’s Teaching Support Program (TSP), a professional development opportunity for Ohio State faculty that incorporates evidence-based teaching strategies into classrooms and educational contexts:

 

“[We] now recognize that the success of the Institute and TSP in particular are a function of an alignment between and among the gears driving and impacting the culture of teaching at the University. Institutional change takes place over time and, understandably, models of institutional change (e.g., Kotter, 1996; Borrego & Henderson, 2014) conceptualize and consider means of facilitating that change over time—diachronically. By also examining change synchronically and analyzing critical points during the life of institutional change, as we do here, we have investigated how simultaneously occurring and changing factors, features, and values impact and oftentimes have significant implications for institutional change. Higher education leaders seeking to change culture might benefit from considering more explicitly how even seemingly diverse objectives might be served or aligned when promoting or developing change mechanisms.

 

A copy of Transforming Institutions is available for download here.