A substantial amount of research has been conducted about teaching practices at the secondary school level. However, less research has examined how different college instructors with various degrees of teaching experience implement reformed curricula. In order to improve college teaching practices and better support students’ learning, we need to identify and characterize effective approaches to the implementation of evidence-based instruction at the undergraduate level. In particular, we are exploring and developing a better understanding of : 1)How different instructors create opportunities for students to actively engage with the content;2)How different instructors implement formative assessment to support and guide student learning. Specifically,we are insterested in how do college chemistry instructors with different degrees of teaching experience implement a new General Chemistry curriculum? What different strategies do individual instructors use to promote and support student learning? And what individual knowledge and beliefs influence the instructional decisions and actions of college chemistry instructors? The analysis of this research pays attention to both domain-general and domain-specific aspects of the implementation: for domain general, it is analysis of general student-teacher interaction patterns during the introduction , development, and evaluation of in-class activities.For domain specific, it is analysis of the nature and depth of the “chemical” conversations established and promoted by the instructors in the classroom. The initial insights of this research are: 1)Instructors often implement the same activities in different manners, and their instructional decisions have a strong impact on student engagement and level of reasoning.2) Major differences are observed in the extent to which instructors probe student thinking and challenge student reasoning by asking for more in-depth explanations and posing additional questions.The results of our study should be useful to instructors who seek to effectively implement evidence-based teaching strategies in their classrooms. They will also support the development of instruments for assessing science college teaching that go beyond cataloguing teachers’ and students’ actions.

Comparing different approaches to the implementation of a new chemistry curriculum

251st National Meeting (2016)

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