The impact of course-wide adoption of InTeGrate teaching materials on the instructional beliefs and practices of geoscience instructors
Oral Session Part of
Monday A: Teaching with Societally-relevant Curriculum
A primary goal of the InTeGrate project is to create student-centered teaching curricula that will improve the geoscience literacy of undergraduate students by teaching the geosciences in the context of societal issues. As part of the InTeGrate Research Team, eight faculty members from a variety of institutions across the US adopted 18 instructional units of InTeGrate curricula to use in their courses. The project ran over three semesters, with the Fall 2015 serving as a control semester in which the instructors taught their courses how they traditionally had. InTeGrate teaching units were then employed in both the Spring 2016 and Fall 2016 iterations of their course. This research evaluated the impact that the curricula adoption had on moving the instructors toward more student-centered teaching practices and beliefs about teaching and learning. Teaching practices were measured in both the Fall 2015 control and Fall 2016 treatment semester using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) as well as the self-report Teaching Practices Inventory (TPI). Beliefs about teaching and learning were assessed using the Teacher Beliefs Interview (TBI) at four points during the project, prior to the start of every semester and after the final Fall 2016 treatment semester. The results of the RTOP, TPI, and TBI data will be presented, along with a discussion of whether adopting student-centered teaching materials with little other training or guidance can serve as effective professional development that promotes change toward student-centered practices and beliefs in the adopting instructors.