Develop change strategies that allow for emergent outcomes: Faculty as reform partners
There are two important participants in instructional change. One is the instructors who are
interested in or being asked to change their instruction. The other, change agents, are curriculum
developers or professional development providers who provide information, materials, encouragement,
etc. to help the instructors. We identified four types of interaction between external change agent and
instructor in the change process (Figure 2). Although change agents typically operate on the
adoption/adaptation end many faculty would prefer to collaborate in some form of reinvention [10].
Instructors recognize that an instructional package created elsewhere will necessarily have to be
reworked to fit in the unique local environment Faculty want and expect to be partners in the reform process. However, faculty lack the expertise of
education researchers and may develop materials in ways that are not consistent with effective
outcomes. This often leads change agents to discredit faculty as true reform partners and to instead
treat them as receptacles of reform. When viewed from certain perspectives, this division of labor that
treats educational researchers as developers and faculty as implementers appears quite sensible.
However, it also appears that most faculty have a strong feeling of ownership over their teaching that
makes this division of labor problematic. We do not expect any reform effort to be successful unless it
involves faculty as meaningful participants