| While research-based curricula and instructional strategies in introductory physics are becoming more widespread, how these strategies are implemented by educators is less well understood. Understanding classroom implementation of these strategies is further complicated by the fact that they are being used beyond the institutions at which they were developed. This thesis examines how educational innovations are taken up, take root, and transform educational practice. Data is analyzed from two case studies in educational change at the University of Colorado: the use of Peer Instruction (PI) and the use of the Tutorials in Introductory Physics. Our research studies on PI establish that (1) professors' actual practices involving the use of PI differ strikingly, thus exposing students to different scientific practices, (2) variations in classroom practices create different classroom norms, and (3) students perceive PI classrooms differently in ways that are associated with corresponding PI implementation. Investigations into the use of the Tutorials in Introductory Physics (Tutorials) reveal that focusing purely on individual faculty members' experiences does not fully capture the complexity of the change processes associated with Tutorials adoption. Although individual faculty members play important roles in the adoption and institutionalization process, other changes occur simultaneously throughout the educational system (i.e. shifts in internal and external funding, as well as expanding partnerships between the physics department, other STEM departments, the School of Education, and other university programs). By examining faculty within the situations that they work, we have found that structural changes in how institutions operate are coupled with changes in how individual faculty members' teach their courses. These findings call into question the common assumption of dissemination approaches that focus solely on individual faculty members' adoption and individual use of curricular materials and suggest that approaches to educational change might be more successful by coordinating and addressing multiple levels of the educational system simultaneously. |
