DOI: 10.3886/e110741
title: Navigating the Problem Space of Academic Work

description: Despite an increasing focus on the quality of teaching in postsecondary institutions, little research exists that examines how faculty actually plan their courses in real-world settings. In this study the idea of the “problem space” from cognitive science is used to examine how faculty construct mental representations for the task of planning undergraduate courses. Using data from free lists and retrospective interviews, I report the factors that most shape the planning space and subsequent strategies and curricular artifacts used by a group of 58 faculty. Results indicate the primacy of fixed affordances, such as workload constraints, course content, and class size, and that these constraints contribute to the routine maintenance of preexisting lecture notes and PowerPoint slides. I recommend that educational leaders consider these cultural practices when designing instructional reforms and enact policies that require faculty to engage in brief, postclass reflection that results in minor updates to these artifacts.<br>
description: The data collected for this study include semistructured<br>interviews and classroom observations, both of which are<br>well suited to answer the four research questions motivating<br>the study. Interview data were analyzed for the entire study<br>sample of 58 faculty, whereas observation data were used<br>only for the two participants in the in-depth analysis. All<br>data were collected by three analysts who underwent extensive<br>training in the research protocols.<br>Semistructured interviews. The interview protocols<br>included a free-list exercise and a series of questions about<br>instructional decision making. First, the free-list exercise<br>involved asking respondents to report the first thing, using<br>single words or short phrases, that came to mind when they<br>thought of the contextual factors that most influenced their<br>own course planning. The free-list technique is commonly<br>used in cognitive anthropology research, especially to<br>identify “emic,” or insider, cultural domains in ethnographic<br>fieldwork (Bernard, 2011; Quinlan, 2005). The<br>method assumes that when people report terms, they do so<br>in order of familiarity and cognitive salience (Romney &<br>D’Andrade, 1964). Second, respondents were asked questions about how<br>they planned for a specific class using a variation of the<br>critical decision-making technique (Crandall et al., 2006;<br>Klein, 2008), which is a retrospective think-aloud technique<br>that elicits details about how decisions were made in specific<br>situations. Respondents were asked to report the steps<br>they went through while planning for a class taught that<br>week. Follow-up probes included questions about any<br>contextual factor that influenced the decision, curricular<br>artifacts that resulted from the planning process, and if and<br>how these artifacts would be used in their teaching (see also<br>Feldon, 2010). Interviews lasted 30 to 45 minutes and were<br>recorded and transcribed.<br>Classroom observations. The Teaching Dimensions Observation<br>Protocol (TDOP) is a classroom observation instrument<br>developed to produce fine-grained descriptions of<br>instructional practice (see Hora & Ferrare, 2013). The version<br>of the TDOP used in this study captured five different<br>dimensions of teaching practice: teaching methods, pedagogical<br>strategies, student-teacher interactions, cognitive<br>engagement, and use of instructional technology. Within<br>each dimension there exist several detailed codes that<br>observers capture at 2-minute intervals in real time. Prior to<br>gathering data in the field, the three researchers established<br>a common understanding of each code through rigorous<br>training that included in-depth discussions about the meaning<br>of each code category and individual codes, practice<br>coding of videoed class segments, and finally, the testing of<br>interrater reliability.<br><br><br>
description: The cases analyzed in this study are of the course-planning<br>practices of 58 faculty in math, biology, chemistry, geology,<br>and physics departments at three large, public research universities.<br>The three study institutions were selected on the<br>basis of the interests of the larger study from which this analysis<br>is drawn—that of educational practice in undergraduate<br>science and math departments. The three institutions shared<br>similar undergraduate populations (approximately 25,000),<br>numbers of science and math departments, and numbers of<br>pedagogical reforms underway. The sampling frame for this<br>study included 170 individuals listed in the spring 2012 timetable<br>as the instructor of record for undergraduate courses in<br>the departments being studied. Individuals were contacted up<br>to two times via e-mail for participation in the study, and 58<br>faculty ultimately self-selected into the study.<br><br>