DISCUSSION
Do Traditional Teaching Practices Dominate
Undergraduate STEM Instruction?
Collecting data on teaching practices on a campus-wide
scale has allowed us to answer broad questions about STEM
instruction. In particular, we were interested in determining
whether or not traditional teaching practices dominate undergraduate
STEM instruction at a given institution such as
UM. We found a broad continuum of the presenting code
frequency, ranging from 2 to 98% (Figure 1). UM is a public
research-intensive institution, and we expect that the diversity
of instructional practices is similar to that at comparable
institutions. Furthermore, our observation data are consistent
with data collected using the TPI at the University of
British Columbia (Wieman and Gilbert, 2014). Namely, TPI
scores were spread across a large range in five departments
at this institution.
These results are important in light of recent work arguing
that common categorizations of STEM instruction as
either lecturing or using active-engagement instruction, for
example, lack sufficient detail and may actually be undermining
efforts to provide effective professional development,
because faculty members find it off-putting to be classified
into one of two oversimplified groups (Henderson and
Dancy, 2008; Hora and Ferrare, 2014). While we are unsure of
the exact development of this apparent binary classification,
we suspect it may have emerged because it is often easier and
more practical to compare extremes. Notably, national reports
in the 1980s and early 1990s recommended that higher
education faculty adopt active modes of teaching, such as
peer discussion, and contrasted these recommendations with Figure 5. Comparison of class size and quadrants divided by the
frequency of the instructor presenting code. The line in the middle
of the box represents the median class size for the courses in each
quadrant. The top of the box represents the 75th percentile, and the
bottom of the box represents the 25th percentile. The space in the
box is called the interquartile range (IQR), and the whiskers represent
the lowest and highest data points no more than 1.5 times the
IQR above and below the box. Data points not included in the range
of the whiskers are represented by an “x.” after having a chance to develop a related idea, discuss questions
with their peers, and so on (Schwartz and Bransford,
1998; Smith et al., 2011). Thus, students in quadrant IV are not
given the opportunity to engage with the content in interactive
ways compared with students in other courses.
Interestingly, students in classes in all four quadrants answer
instructor questions (AnQ) and pose questions (SQ;
Figure 3, shades of red). These results indicate this form of
communication between students and instructors is common
to STEM courses at a campus-wide level, regardless of other
characteristics of the course instruction, and may therefore
be used as a point of reference to frame future professional
development for faculty.