TY - JOUR
T1 - A National Snapshot of Introductory Chemistry Instructors and Their Instructional Practices
AU - Wang, Ying
AU - Apkarian, Naneh
AU - Dancy, Melissa H.
AU - Henderson, Charles
AU - Johnson, Estrella
AU - Raker, Jeffrey R.
AU - Stains, Marilyne
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
PY - 2024/4/9
Y1 - 2024/4/9
N2 - The effectiveness of active learning on promoting students’ academic outcomes and persistence has been established in the literature. However, despite the effort of purposeful change agents, the uptake of active learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is slow. While previous research from the chemistry education community has provided insights into the implementation of specific active learning strategies across the United States, the extent to which chemistry instructors leverage these strategies in general remains unknown. This article presents the results of a national survey aimed at exploring introductory chemistry instructors’ knowledge and implementation of active learning, variations on this knowledge, and use across tenure statuses and institution types. This paper also aims to address the gap in the literature in our understanding of the characteristics of instructors of these courses. We thus provide a description of instructors’ demographics, training, teaching experience, and teaching responsibilities. Our findings reveal that instructors in these courses are prominently males of European descent. Additionally, instructors come into their teaching position with minimal pedagogical training and participate mainly in short training once in their position. While the majority of instructors have knowledge of specific active learning strategies, their consistent implementation remains limited, with lecturing still being the instructional practice of choice. Variations were found between institution types and across tenure statuses within institutions in terms of pedagogical training, use of specific active learning strategies, and proportion of class time spent lecturing. The findings provide a baseline for future studies that aim to assess the effectiveness of interventions fostering the implementation of active learning in introductory chemistry courses and highlight the critical need for improved communication about teaching practices across institutions and tenure statuses.
AB - The effectiveness of active learning on promoting students’ academic outcomes and persistence has been established in the literature. However, despite the effort of purposeful change agents, the uptake of active learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is slow. While previous research from the chemistry education community has provided insights into the implementation of specific active learning strategies across the United States, the extent to which chemistry instructors leverage these strategies in general remains unknown. This article presents the results of a national survey aimed at exploring introductory chemistry instructors’ knowledge and implementation of active learning, variations on this knowledge, and use across tenure statuses and institution types. This paper also aims to address the gap in the literature in our understanding of the characteristics of instructors of these courses. We thus provide a description of instructors’ demographics, training, teaching experience, and teaching responsibilities. Our findings reveal that instructors in these courses are prominently males of European descent. Additionally, instructors come into their teaching position with minimal pedagogical training and participate mainly in short training once in their position. While the majority of instructors have knowledge of specific active learning strategies, their consistent implementation remains limited, with lecturing still being the instructional practice of choice. Variations were found between institution types and across tenure statuses within institutions in terms of pedagogical training, use of specific active learning strategies, and proportion of class time spent lecturing. The findings provide a baseline for future studies that aim to assess the effectiveness of interventions fostering the implementation of active learning in introductory chemistry courses and highlight the critical need for improved communication about teaching practices across institutions and tenure statuses.
KW - Collaborative/Cooperative Learning
KW - First-Year Undergraduate/General
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85187644243&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85187644243&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00040
DO - 10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00040
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85187644243
SN - 0021-9584
VL - 101
SP - 1457
EP - 1468
JO - Journal of Chemical Education
JF - Journal of Chemical Education
IS - 4
ER -