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1. Decentering and Interconnecting as Key Practices for Change Agency Leadership in Teaching focused Professional Development for College Mathematics Instructors

   Hauk, S; Speer, N (September 2024, Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education)

   Cook, S; Katz, B; Moore-Russo, D (Ed.)

   In this poster we illustrate how stewardship, a particular kind of leadership, in the complex system of mathematics instructional development requires decentering and interconnecting. This theory development for professional growth of faculty agents for change expands on earlier work describing how instructional practices used by providers of teaching-focused professional development in seminars about teaching (for graduate students) could be beneficial both for learning high-powered approaches to teaching of undergraduate mathematics and for building a foundation for future change-agent work. Here we move one level up and present an analogous argument about practices for stewards who are teaching about teaching about teaching. The poster illustrates the multilevel system with an expanded model that incorporates learning objectives for provider professional learning and the instructional practices of such professional learning in ways that showcase (and teach about) decentering and interconnecting. 

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2. Backward transfer, the relationship between new learning and prior ways of reasoning, and action versus process views of linear functions

   https://doi.org/10.1080/10986065.2022.2037043  

   Hohensee, Charles; Willoughby, Laura; Gartland, Sara (February 2022, Mathematical Thinking and Learning)

   Backward transfer is defined as the influence that new learning has on individuals’ prior ways of reasoning. In this article, we report on an exploratory study that examined the influences that quadratic functions instruction in real classrooms had on students’ prior ways of reasoning about linear functions. Two algebra classes and their teachers at two comprehensive high schools served as the participants. Both schools drew from lowsocioeconomic urban populations. The study involved paper-and-pencil assessments about linear functions that were administered before and after a four- to five-week instructional unit on quadratic functions. The teachers were instructed to teach the quadratic functions unit using their regular approach. Qualitative analysis revealed three kinds of backward transfer influences and each influence was related to a shift in how the students reasoned about functions in terms of an action or process view of functions. Additionally, features of the instruction in each class provided plausible explanations for the similarities and differences in backward transfer effects across the two classrooms. These results offer insights into backward transfer, the relationship between prior knowledge and new learning, aspects of reasoning about linear functions, and instructional approaches to teaching functions. 

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3. How Can We Improve Online Learning at Community Colleges?: Voices from Online Instructors and Students

   https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v25i3.2362  

   Li, Qiujie; Zhou, Xuehan; Bostian, Brad; Xu, Di (September 2021, Online Learning)

   With the rapid growth of online learning at community colleges and the low course completion and performance associated with it, there has been increasing need to identify effective ways to address the challenges in online teaching and learning at this setting. Based on open-ended survey responses from 105 instructors and 365 students from multiple community colleges in a state, this study examined instructors’ and students’ perceptions of effective and ineffective instructional practices and changes needed in online coursework. By combining structural topic modelling techniques with human coding, we identified instructional practices that were perceived by both instructors and students as effective in supporting online learning as well as ineffective and needing improvement. Moreover, we identified a handful of misalignments between instructors and students in their perceptions of online teaching, including course workload and effective ways to communicate. 

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4. Instructional practice learning through Instructional Incubator engagement

   Woodcock, Cassandra S.E.; Antoine, Haley; Tarnowski, Madison; Huang-Saad, Aileen (January 2019, Proceedings of the 8th Research in Engineering Education Symposium, REES 2019 - Making Connections)

   While student-centered learning has been shown to improve learning experiences in the engineering classroom, adoption of these evidence-based strategies has been slow. Research has shown that faculty beliefs about teaching and limited exposure to formal training influence effective implementation of evidenced-based instructional practices. Thus, in an effort to explore ways to implement long-term instructional change in engineering higher education, a graduate-level course, the Instructional Incubator (I2), was developed to expose future educators to instructional design and evidence-based practices. In the I2, student participants developed new biomedical engineering short-courses in an active learning classroom. For the first two iterations of the I2, we examined how this immersive experience influenced participants’ perceived teaching abilities and understanding before and after enrolling in the I2. Both I2 cohorts reported an increase in knowledge of engineering education related terms and showed a shift away from behaviorist and cognitive beliefs about teaching and learning. Introduction 

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5. Making the Case for Inorganic Chemistry Education Research: Insights from Symmetry

   https://doi.org/10.1080/02603594.2025.2523259  

   Pazicni, Samuel; Popova, Maia (June 2025, Comments on Inorganic Chemistry)

   Chemistry Education Research has transformed how we understand and improve student learning in general and organic chemistry, but inorganic chemistry remains understudied. This gap persists even though inorganic instruction involves complex representational demands, spatial reasoning, abstract formalisms, and instructional traditions that shape how students experience the subject. Using molecular symmetry as a case study, this contribution argues that research on teaching and learning must attend more closely to inorganic chemistry. We outline how challenges in student cognition, instructional design, representational tools, and instructor assumptions interact in ways that affect learning but remain poorly understood. Drawing on frameworks from cognitive psychology and learning sciences, we highlight the need for systematic, discipline-specific investigations into how students learn and how instructors teach key inorganic concepts. Finally, we offer a research agenda that extends beyond symmetry to areas like bonding theory, coordination chemistry, and solid-state structures. By investing in a robust teaching and learning research program for inorganic chemistry, we can develop instructional strategies grounded in empirical evidence, improving student learning and supporting the evolution of the discipline. 

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