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 teammore »
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 investigatemore »
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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 recipientsmore »
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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 resultsmore »
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Our work with teams funded through the National Science Foundation REvolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) program began in 2015. Our project—funded first by a NSF EAGER grant, and then by a NSF RFE grant—focuses on understanding how the RED teams make change on their campuses and how this information about change can be captured and communicated to other STEM programs that seek to make change happen. Because our RED Participatory Action Research (REDPAR) Project is a collaboration between researchers (Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity at the University of Washington) and practitioners (Making Academic Change Happenmore »