Learning from Change Leaders: Reflections from the 2023 Transforming Institutions Conference
Casey Wright, Western Michigan University; Madhura Kulkarni, Northern Kentucky University
The Change Leaders working group led a workshop and hosted a breakfast conversation to bring together emergent and established change leaders at the 2023 Transforming Institutions Conference in Minneapolis, June 12-13, 2023. At the workshop, we met change leaders who are hard at work on their campuses in roles as faculty members, post-docs, educational technology staff, center for teaching and learning staff, STEM center staff, and university administrators.

Do you need a change theory?
Tessa Andrews, University of Georgia; Daniel Reinholz, San Diego State University
Do you have an innovative new approach to teaching? Are you an educator who is frustrated by the lack of support for new teaching methods? Are you an administrator trying to improve education on your campus? Although research has taught us a lot about how to improve teaching and learning, actually making these improvements a reality can be much more challenging. That is where change theory comes in.

Yale University/Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL)
Contact: Jennifer Frederick; Yale University, jennifer.frederick@yale.edu
The CTL provides information about sources of feedback instructors can use to inform their teaching and also provides consulting services to faculty. Many sources of feedback are available to instructors to inform their teaching, including: self-reflection, students' mid-semester feedback, peer review of teaching, and end-of-term evaluations. Instructors should feel empowered to determine what methods fit the needs and context of their situation and to try out different approaches over time.

Aligning practice to policies: changing the culture to recognize and reward teaching at research universities
Aligning practice to policies: changing the culture to recognize and reward teaching at research universities In this review, the authors highlight the gap between existing policies at many research institutions, ...

Inclusive Approaches to Reviewing Scholarship: A New Guide
Naneh Apkarian, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus; Kathy Quardokus Fisher, University of Notre Dame; Brian Burt, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The ASCN Guiding Theories Working Group is working on answering the question "How might we better support people's use of theories, models, and scholarship in their planned systemic change efforts?" The Breaking Down Silos working meeting (previously discussed on the ASCN blog) brought together scholars to discuss and organize existing theories and models of change from scholarship related to change in undergraduate STEM education. One of the discussions focused on representation, which in turn led to the development of the Guide to Inclusion Awareness in the Organization of Knowledge (Acrobat (PDF) 216kB May28 19), which is the subject of this post. At Breaking Down Silos, the question of inclusion and exclusion arose. That is, what literature was included in the body of work considered to be relevant, and what was left out? Who was represented at the meeting (and in the working group), and who was not? Why? What are the resulting implications of these boundaries for our work? These questions are relevant across many contexts, and our discussions over the working meeting and beyond led to the creation of the Guide to Inclusion Awareness in the Organization of Knowledge (Acrobat (PDF) 216kB May28 19) document. It is a set of guiding questions to support inclusion and transparency in the creation of scholarly work. In this blog, we highlight and discuss some of the concerns about developing typographies or literature reviews that led to the development of this guide.

Understanding how instructional change works
Stephanie Chasteen, University of Colorado at Boulder
Recommended article: "It's Personal: Biology Instructors Prioritize Personal Evidence over Empirical Evidence in Teaching Decisions," by Tessa Andrews and Paula Lemons, CBE-Life Sciences Education, 14 (2015). I am involved in several projects which aim to help faculty learn about and implement effective teaching practices. To design or evaluate such programs, it's useful to have a model of how faculty take up new teaching practices. I want to highlight an article by Andrews and Lemons which recently influenced my thinking. (Note that Tessa Andrews co-leads ASCN Change Theories working group). One model that is often used in faculty change projects is the Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations model, which suggests that in order to adopt a new idea a person must become aware of it, be persuaded that it is useful, decide to use it, implement it, and then decide to continue to use it

Transforming Institutions Takeaways
Rachel Renbarger, Western Michigan University
Last week concluded the 2021 Transforming Institutions Conference that marked the 10th year of convening like-minded change leaders. The event was a rousing success; we had over 250 participants from at least 3 continents with over 40 concurrent presentations, 60+ posters, and 4 workshops containing research-based strategies for improving higher education. What did we learn from such an amazing event?

A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas
National Research Council

Does teaching advance your academic career?
Does teaching advance your academic career? Table: Examples of evidence that could be included in a promotion case for each level of teaching achievement, structured within four evidence domains. This table, taken ...

Join an ASCN working group!
Kate White Temple University Kate White (Western Michigan University), ASCN Research Director
Have you been considering joining one of our working groups, but aren't sure where to start? Here you'll find updates on what each of our groups is working on and more information on how to get involved in 2020. You can join any of our working groups by filling out this short form. Keep reading to learn more about how we're exploring theories of change; the costs, benefits, and impact of change; change leadership; equity and inclusion in systemic change; aligning faculty work with change; and learning spaces.