This panel paper presents research on connecting theory to practice and the lessons learned in a change project, with a focus on team formation during the early stages of change making. An important yet often overlooked step in any change project is pulling together individuals to form a competent and efficient team. The literature has identified six key characteristics of a guiding coalition (i.e., an effective change-making team): position power, expertise, credibility, leadership, trust, and a common goal. In this qualitative study of 10 teams working on systemic change projects at their respective institutions, we examine the process of team formation through the framework of guiding coalitions. We find that the characteristics of a guiding coalition shift and evolve over time, as relationships among team members (and with their stakeholders) continue to grow. The results presented in this paper connect theory to practice, sharing practices for building effective change-making teams within higher education. Permalink: https://peer.asee.org/32489.
Building Your Dream Team for Change
his panel paper presents research on connecting theory to practice and the lessons learned in a change project, with a focus on team formation during the early stages of change making. An important yet often overlooked step in any change project is pulling together individuals to form a competent and efficient team. A functional change-making team requires a variety of complementary skill sets, which may come from different disciplinary backgrounds and/or different prior experiences.
Kotter (1996) uses the term “guiding coalition” to refer to an effective change-making team. He identifies four key characteristics of guiding coalitions: position power, expertise, credibility, leadership. Kotter also goes on to examine the importance of trust and a common goal. In a review of the literature on guiding coalitions, Have, Have, Huijsmans, and Otto (2017) found that though the concept of a guiding coalition is widely advocated in the literature, only one study showed a moderate correlation between the existence of a guiding coalition and the success of a change process (Abraham, Griffin, & Crawford, 1999). Have et al. (2017) conclude that while the literature provides little evidence to the value of a guiding coalition, it does provide evidence that Kotter’s characteristics of a guiding coalition more »
- Award ID(s):
- 1649318
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10208052
- Journal Name:
- 2019 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Our NSF funded project—Creating National Leadership Cohorts to Make Academic Change Happen (NSF 1649318)—represents a strategic partnership between researchers and practitioners in the domain of academic change. The principle investigators from the Making Academic Change Happen team from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology provide familiarity with the literature of practical organizational change and package this into action-oriented workshops and ongoing support for teams funded through the REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) program. The PIs from the Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity at the University of Washington provide expertise in social science research in order to investigate how the the RED teams’ change projects unfold and how the teams develop as members of national leadership cohorts for change in engineering and computer science education. Our poster for ASEE 2018 will focus on what we have learned thus far regarding the dynamics of the researcher/practitioner partnership through the RED Participatory Action Research (REDPAR) Project. According to Worrall (2007), good partnerships are “founded on trust, respect, mutual benefit, good communities, and governance structures that allow democratic decision-making, process improvement, and resource sharing.” We have seen these elements emerge through the work of the partnership to create mutual benefits. Formore »
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This research paper investigates how individual change agents come together to form effective teams. Improving equity within academic engineering requires changes that are often too complex and too high-risk for a faculty member to pursue on their own. Teams offer the advantage of combining a diverse skill set of many individuals, as well as bringing together insider knowledge and external specialist expertise. However, in order for teams of academic change agents to function effectively, they must overcome the challenges of internal politics, power differentials, and group conflict. This analysis of team formation emerges from our participatory action research with recipients of the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grants. Through an NSF-funded collaboration between the University of Washington and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technoliogy, we work with the RED teams to research the process of change as they work to improve equity and inclusion within their institutions. Utilizing longitudinal qualitative data from focus group discussions with 16 teams at the beginning and midpoints of their projects, we examine the development of teams to transform engineering education. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from social movement theory, we highlight the importance of creating a unified team voice and developing a sense of group agency. Teamsmore »
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Abstract Background Team-based instructional change is a promising model for improving undergraduate STEM instruction. Teams are more likely to produce sustainable, innovative, and high-quality outcomes than individuals working alone. However, teams also tend to involve higher risks of failure and can result in inefficient allocation of valuable resources. At this point, there is limited knowledge of how teams in the context of STEM higher education should work to achieve desirable outcomes. Results In this study, we collect semi-structured interview data from 23 team members from a total of 4 teams at 3 institutions across the USA. We analyze the results using a grounded theory approach and connect them to the existing literature. This study builds upon the first part of our work that developed a model of team inputs that lead to team outcomes. In this part, we identify the mechanisms by which input characteristics influence teamwork and outcomes. Team member data expand this initial model by identifying key aspects of team processes and emergent states. In this paper, we present five team processes: strategic leadership, egalitarian power dynamics, team member commitment, effective communication, and clear decision-making processes, that shape how teams work together, and three emergent states: shared vision,more »
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