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1. College faculty support for grade 7-12 teaching careers: survey results and comparisons to student perceptions

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2020.pr.Logan  

   Logan, Savannah L.; Breakall, Jared B.; Pearson, Richard L.; Adams, Wendy K. (September 2020, 2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings)

   Wolf, Steven F.; Bennett, Michael B.; Frank, Brian W. (Ed.)

   The United States is facing a critical shortage of grade 7-12 teachers in the STEM disciplines, particularly in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Faculty members play a major role in their students' career choices, and faculty members' perceptions of the profession may determine whether students choose to pursue teaching. To this end, we developed two surveys to measure student and faculty perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching. We found that both groups hold many incorrect beliefs about teaching careers. Furthermore, we found that faculty members believe they are quite supportive of future teachers, while students perceive that they are less supportive. Our findings highlight the need for both faculty members and students to be informed about the benefits of careers in grade 7-12 teaching. Additionally, our results suggest that faculty members should work to dispel their internal biases surrounding the teaching profession, which may inadvertently drive students away from grade 7-12 teaching. 

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2. Maybe we aren’t that different after all: Faculty perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching as a career

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2020.pr.Breakall  

   Breakall, Jared B.; Logan, Savannah L.; Pearson III, Richard L.; Pyper, Brian A.; Adams, Wendy K. (September 2020, 2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings)

   Wolf, Steven F.; Bennett, Michael B.; Frank, Brian W. (Ed.)

   Nearly half of STEM majors in the United States express interest in becoming a grade 7-12 teacher, yet as a nation we face a shortage of qualified math and science teachers. Studies have found that misperceptions about grade 7-12 math and science teaching are impacting student career choices. As part of the Get the Facts Out project, this work addresses faculty perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching because faculty play an important role in student career decisions. Additionally, understanding how faculty perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching differ may inform targeted efforts to change perceptions in the future. In this study, nearly 500 college STEM faculty members' perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching were measured using a newly developed survey. Faculty perceptions were then compared based on department affiliation, position type, and gender. No significantly practical differences were found based on these demographics. Implications for STEM teacher recruitment are discussed. 

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3. A comparison of student perceptions of the teaching profession at minority-serving and non-minority-serving institutions

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2021.pr.logan  

   Logan, Savannah L.; Breakall, Jared B.; Adams, Wendy K. (October 2021, Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings)

   There is an ongoing shortage of STEM teachers in the United States, and the teaching profession consistently struggles to recruit a diverse body of teachers whose demographics match those of their students. The shortage of STEM teachers and the lack of diversity in the profession have negative implications for student success in STEM fields, particularly among underrepresented groups. We have developed a survey and collected data on student perceptions of the teaching profession at 46 Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) across the country, including several Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs). We have analyzed these data with respect to institution type to determine whether perceptions of the profession may be a factor in recruiting and retaining a diverse body of teachers. We found that perceptions generally do not differ greatly between MSIs and non-MSIs and that students at MSIs tend to have slightly more positive views than those at non-MSIs. We also found that some variation exists for individual institution types, particularly Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs). 

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4. Faculty Perceptions of STEM Student and Faculty Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Study (WIP).

   Lamssali, Mehdi; Nicholas, Olivia; Ferguson, Alesia; Ofori-Boadu, Andrea; White, Angela (July 2021, ASEE annual conference exposition)

   Miller, Eva (Ed.)

   The recent outbreak of COVID-19, considered as being a lethal pandemic by the World Health Organization, has caused profound changes in the educational system within the U.S and across the world. Overnight, universities and their educators had to switch to a largely online teaching format, which challenged their capacity to deliver learning content effectively to STEM students. Students were forced to adapt to a new learning environment in the midst of challenges in their own lives due to the COVID-19 effects on society and professional expectations. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate faculty perceptions of STEM student experiences during COVID-19. Through a qualitative methodology consisting of one-hour zoom interviews administered to 32 STEM faculty members from six U.S. Universities nationwide, faculty narratives regarding student and faculty experiences during COVID-19 were obtained. The qualitative research approach involved identifying common themes across faculty experiences and views in these narratives. Some of the categories of emerging themes associated with faculty perceptions on student and faculty experiences included: student struggles and challenges, student cheating and the online environment, faculty and student adaptability, faculty and student needs and support, and university resources and support. Best practices to facilitate online teaching and learning employed by STEM faculty were also discussed. Key findings revealed that students and faculty had both positive and negative experiences during COVID-19. Additionally, there was a greater need for consistent policies to improve the online student learning experiences. Recommendations to improve STEM student experiences include increased institutional resources and collaboration between faculty and the university administrators to provide a coherent online learning environment. Preliminary findings also provide insights to enhance institutional adaptability and resilience for improving STEM student experiences during future pandemics. Future research should continue to explore institutional adaptation strategies that enhance STEM student learning during pandemics. 

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5. A Rapid and Formative Response by the Engineering Education Faculty to Support the Engineering Faculty and Students Throughout the Extreme Classroom Changes Resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36606  

   White, Lance; Jaison, Donna; Ray, Samantha; Brumbelow, Kelly; Fields, Sherecce; Barroso, Luciana; Watson, Karan; Hammond, Tracy (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   This paper describes an evidence based-practice paper to a formative response to the engineering faculty and students’ needs at Anonymous University. Within two weeks, the pandemic forced the vast majority of the 1.5 million faculty and 20 million students nationwide to transition all courses from face-to-face to entirely online. Never in the history of higher education has there been a concerted effort to adapt so quickly and radically, nor have we had the technology to facilitate such a rapid and massive change. At Anonymous University, over 700 engineering educators were racing to transition their courses. Many of those faculty had never experienced online course preparation, much less taught one synchronously or asynchronously. Faculty development centers and technology specialists across the university made a great effort to aid educators in this transition. These educators had questions about the best practices for moving online, how their students were affected, and the best ways to engage their students. However, these faculty’s detailed questions were answerable only by faculty peers’ experience, students’ feedback, and advice from experts in relevant engineering education research-based practices. This paper describes rapid, continuous, and formative feedback provided by the Engineering Education Faculty Group (EEFG) to provide an immediate response for peer faculty guidance during the pandemic, creating a community of practice. The faculty membership spans multiple colleges in the university, including engineering, education, and liberal arts. The EEFG transitioned immediately to weekly meetings focused on the rapidly changing needs of their colleagues. Two surveys were generated rapidly by Hammond et al. to characterize student and faculty concerns and needs in March of 2020 and were distributed through various means and media. Survey 1 and 2 had 3381 and 1506 respondents respectively with most being students, with 113 faculty respondents in survey 1, the focus of this piece of work. The first survey was disseminated as aggregated data to the College of Engineering faculty with suggested modifications to course structures based on these findings. The EEFG continued to meet and collaborate during the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester and has continued through to this day. This group has acted as a hub for teaching innovation in remote online pedagogy and techniques, while also operating as a support structure for members of the group, aiding those members with training in teaching tools, discussion difficult current events, and various challenges they are facing in their professional teaching lives. While the aggregated data gathered from the surveys developed by Hammond et al. was useful beyond measure in the early weeks of the pandemic, little attention at the time was given to the responses of faculty to that survey. The focus of this work has been to characterize faculty perceptions at the beginning of the pandemic and compare those responses between engineering and non-engineering faculty respondents, while also comparing reported perceptions of pre- and post-transition to remote online teaching. Interviews were conducted between 4 members of the EEFG with the goal of characterizing some of the experiences they have had while being members of the group during the time of the pandemic utilizing Grounded theory qualitative analysis. 

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