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Leaders, policymakers, and researchers have called attention to the need to improve critical aspects of physics programs, from teaching and pedagogy to making physics more diverse and equitable. As such programmatic changes are challenging and require a second-order change to be effective, many physics faculty responsible for carrying them out are not equipped with the necessary experience and support to do so. This can result in a significant waste of resources and time. Moreover, while there is a robust body of literature in higher education focusing on institutional and cultural change, there is a limited understanding of the baseline of the culture of physics programs (where physics programs are starting from), a critical aspect that shapes the change effort. Dr. David Craig and Dr. Joel Corbo with the support of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers developed the Departmental Action Leadership Institutes (DALIs) to meet the needs of the physics community by supporting physics faculty to effectively design and implement departmental change focusing on areas needing improvement. In this research project, we developed case studies of five DALI-active physics programs from two DALI cohorts. We use a cultural dynamics lens to document facets of the dominant culture around how physics faculty approach and pursue change work. We see evidence of DALI participants’ growing awareness of taken-for-granted assumptions about educational change processes and assessment practices within their departmental cultures and coming to recognize and value alternative ways of collaborating and enacting change in their local contexts. We found that physics faculty typically approach change work in a rushed and way ignoring the use of formal evidence. In particular, we found that any data collection efforts are the primary responsibility of a single person, rarely becoming the focus of joint attention. Whenever data did receive joint attention, it was approached in a cursory way without meaningfully informing collective change efforts. This study lays the foundation to explore critical aspects of the dominant physics culture that may constrain enacting particular forms of programmatic change. In future work, we document the cultural shifts made by these DALI-active departments around change work.
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Changing the culture: Documenting shifts in a department's norms around data use
Cultural change that requires revision of taken-for-granted assumptions is necessitated to enact programmatic changes. However, such cultural change processes are challenging and time-consuming and therefore require continued support and resources. Data sensemaking is one important aspect of culture that local stakeholders often overlook. In this project, we study the change process enacted by local Departmental Action Teams (DATs) resulting from physics faculty members' participation in the Departmental Leadership Action Institutes (DALIs). This study followed two faculty change leaders from one physics program in their journey in DALI and their DAT over a year. This paper discusses preliminary interview results that help us understand how the DAT's microculture is situated within the dominant departmental culture, focused on the facet of data use. For example, we found that past data collection efforts were a primary responsibility of a single person and rarely became the focus of joint attention. Within the DAT, in contrast, a broad set of stakeholders engaged in joint data collection and sensemaking that informed decision making and led to revising initial assumptions about what programmatic changes might be needed in order to reach their goal.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1821372
- PAR ID:
- 10434786
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Physics Education Research Conference 2022
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 401 to 406
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2022.pr.Sachmpazidi
