How engineering faculty interpret pull-oriented innovation development and why context matters

• Autores: Matthew S. Barner, Shane A. Brown, Benjamin D. Lutz, Devlin Montfort
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 34, no. Extra 5, 2018, págs. 1644-1657
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Faculty development programs often operate as platforms for disseminating pedagogical innovations amongst engineer-ing faculty, but adoption of these innovations into engineering classrooms has been less than desirable. Such issues of lowadoption are partially due to the limited opportunity faculty have to pull innovation development towards their uniqueinstructional contexts. However, little research to date has focused on understanding how engineering faculty wouldinterpret such an opportunity to pull innovation development with their owncurriculum in mind. The purpose of this studyis to investigate a faculty development program wherein engineering faculty collaboratively developed curricularinnovations for their mechanics of materials classroom with guidance from research on common student misconceptions.To explore the co-development of innovations, we conducted multiple interviews with the engineering faculty participantsthroughout the academic year. Participants interpreted this program and their co-developed curricular innovations asproviding them with resources they needed to make curricular changes. Findings also demonstrated that faculty adoptionof curricular innovations is highly influenced by context. By allowing faculty a greater role in the innovation developmentprocess, these contextual issues are more readily addressed. This study provides rich and detailed insight into how certainfaculty approach adoption within their own contexts, which can improve faculty development and dissemination ofpedagogical innovations in the future.