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Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach

Just a decade ago Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action was released, catalyzing several initiatives to transform undergraduate life sciences education. Among these was the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE), a national organization commiss...

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Autores principales: Stavrianeas, Stasinos, Bangera, Gita, Bronson, Claire, Byers, Steven, Davis, William, DeMarais, Alyce, Fitzhugh, Ginger, Linder, Nalani, Liston, Carrie, McFarland, Jenny, Otto, Joann, Pape-Lindstrom, Pamela, Pollock, Carol, Reiness, C. Gary, Offerdahl, Erika G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9312400/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35877669
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271123
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author Stavrianeas, Stasinos
Bangera, Gita
Bronson, Claire
Byers, Steven
Davis, William
DeMarais, Alyce
Fitzhugh, Ginger
Linder, Nalani
Liston, Carrie
McFarland, Jenny
Otto, Joann
Pape-Lindstrom, Pamela
Pollock, Carol
Reiness, C. Gary
Offerdahl, Erika G.
author_facet Stavrianeas, Stasinos
Bangera, Gita
Bronson, Claire
Byers, Steven
Davis, William
DeMarais, Alyce
Fitzhugh, Ginger
Linder, Nalani
Liston, Carrie
McFarland, Jenny
Otto, Joann
Pape-Lindstrom, Pamela
Pollock, Carol
Reiness, C. Gary
Offerdahl, Erika G.
author_sort Stavrianeas, Stasinos
collection PubMed
description Just a decade ago Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action was released, catalyzing several initiatives to transform undergraduate life sciences education. Among these was the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE), a national organization commissioned to increase the adoption of Vision and Change recommendations within academic life sciences departments. PULSE activities have been designed based on the recognition that life sciences departments and faculty are embedded within institutions of higher education which, similar to other large organizations, are complex systems composed of multiple, interconnected subsystems. The organizational change research suggests that effecting large-scale changes (e.g., undergraduate STEM education transformation) may be facilitated by applying systems thinking to change efforts. In this paper we introduce the approach of systems thinking as a professional development tool to empower individual STEM faculty to effect department-level transformation. We briefly describe a professional development experience designed to increase life sciences faculty members’ understanding of systems thinking, present evidence that faculty applied a systems thinking approach to initiate department-level change, and discuss the degree to which transformation efforts were perceived to be successful. Though focused on faculty in the life sciences, our findings are broadly transferable to other efforts seeking to effect change in undergraduate STEM education.
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spelling pubmed-93124002022-07-26 Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach Stavrianeas, Stasinos Bangera, Gita Bronson, Claire Byers, Steven Davis, William DeMarais, Alyce Fitzhugh, Ginger Linder, Nalani Liston, Carrie McFarland, Jenny Otto, Joann Pape-Lindstrom, Pamela Pollock, Carol Reiness, C. Gary Offerdahl, Erika G. PLoS One Research Article Just a decade ago Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action was released, catalyzing several initiatives to transform undergraduate life sciences education. Among these was the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE), a national organization commissioned to increase the adoption of Vision and Change recommendations within academic life sciences departments. PULSE activities have been designed based on the recognition that life sciences departments and faculty are embedded within institutions of higher education which, similar to other large organizations, are complex systems composed of multiple, interconnected subsystems. The organizational change research suggests that effecting large-scale changes (e.g., undergraduate STEM education transformation) may be facilitated by applying systems thinking to change efforts. In this paper we introduce the approach of systems thinking as a professional development tool to empower individual STEM faculty to effect department-level transformation. We briefly describe a professional development experience designed to increase life sciences faculty members’ understanding of systems thinking, present evidence that faculty applied a systems thinking approach to initiate department-level change, and discuss the degree to which transformation efforts were perceived to be successful. Though focused on faculty in the life sciences, our findings are broadly transferable to other efforts seeking to effect change in undergraduate STEM education. Public Library of Science 2022-07-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9312400/ /pubmed/35877669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271123 Text en © 2022 Stavrianeas et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Stavrianeas, Stasinos
Bangera, Gita
Bronson, Claire
Byers, Steven
Davis, William
DeMarais, Alyce
Fitzhugh, Ginger
Linder, Nalani
Liston, Carrie
McFarland, Jenny
Otto, Joann
Pape-Lindstrom, Pamela
Pollock, Carol
Reiness, C. Gary
Offerdahl, Erika G.
Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach
title Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach
title_full Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach
title_fullStr Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach
title_full_unstemmed Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach
title_short Empowering faculty to initiate STEM education transformation: Efficacy of a systems thinking approach
title_sort empowering faculty to initiate stem education transformation: efficacy of a systems thinking approach
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9312400/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35877669
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271123
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