Background
Prior efforts have built a knowledge base of effective undergraduate STEM pedagogies, yet rates of implementation remain low. Theories from higher education, management, communication, and other fields can inform change efforts but remain largely inaccessible to STEM education leaders, who are just beginning to view change as a scholarly endeavor informed by the research literature.

Purpose
This article describes the goals, assumptions, and underlying logic of selected change strategies with potential relevance to STEM higher education settings for a target audience of change agents, leaders, and researchers.

Scope/Method
This review is organized according to the Four Categories of Change Strategies model developed by Henderson, Beach, and Finkelstein (2011). We describe eight strategies of potential practical relevance to STEM education change efforts (two from each category). For each change strategy, we present a summary with key references, discuss their applicability to STEM higher education, provide a STEM education example, and discuss implications for change efforts and research.

Conclusions
Change agents are guided, often implicitly, by a single change strategy. These eight strategies will expand the repertoire of change agents by helping them consider change from a greater diversity of perspectives. Change agents can use these descriptions to design more robust change efforts. Improvements in the knowledge and theory base underlying change strategies will occur when change agents situate their writing about change initiatives using shared models, such as the one presented in this article, to make their underlying assumptions about change more explicit.

Increasing the Use of Evidence-Based Teaching in STEM Higher Education: A Comparison of Eight Change Strategies

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted public health and the worldwide economy Converging evidence from the current pandemic, previous outbreaks and controlled experiments indicates that SARS-CoVs are present in wastewater for several days, leading to potential health risks via waterborne and aerosolized wastewater pathways Conventional wastewater treatment provides only partial removal of SARS-CoVs, thus safe disposal or reuse will depend on the efficacy of final disinfection This underscores the need for a risk assessment and management framework tailored to SARS-CoV-2 transmission via wastewater, including new tools for environmental surveillance, ensuring adequate disinfection as a component of overall COVID-19 pandemic containment Converging evidence indicates that SARS-CoVs are present in wastewater for several days with potential health risks This Review analyses knowledge about such risks as well as the potential spread of SARS-CoVs in waterborne, waterborne–aerosolized and waterborne–foodborne pathways during a pandemic

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Rethinking wastewater risks and monitoring in light of the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 outbreak due to SARS-CoV-2 has raised several concerns for its high transmission rate and unavailability of any treatment to date Although major routes of its transmission involve respiratory droplets and direct contact, the infection through faecal matter is also possible Conventional sewage treatment methods with disinfection are expected to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 However, for densely populated countries like India with lower sewage treatment facilities, chances of contamination are extremely high; as SARS-CoVs can survive up to several days in untreated sewage; even for a much longer period in low-temperature regions With around 18 billion people worldwide using faecal-contaminated source as drinking water, the risk of transmission of COVID-19 is expected to increase by several folds, if proper precautions are not being taken Therefore, preventing water pollution at the collection/distribution/consumption point along with proper implementation of WHO recommendations for plumbing/ventilation systems in household is crucial for resisting COVID-19 eruption

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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak: some serious consequences with urban and rural water cycle

Background

Transformative change in higher education requires a continuous interplay between educational research and educational practice In considering how to engage researchers and practitioners in “cycles of educational practice and research” (Jamieson & Lohmann, 2009), we focus on individuals and what motivates them to create and sustain innovations within the engineering education system



Purpose

Through this study, we seek to better understand why faculty do or do not engage in the research–practice cycle Specifically, we employ expectancy value theory and examine the success and value beliefs motivating individuals' choices



Design/Method

We used mixed methods assessment data from two engineering education conferences that focused on promoting transformational change Data included observational notes, open-ended written responses submitted after conference sessions, open-ended survey questions, and quantitative survey questions For data analysis we used descriptive statistics and open coding techniques



Results

We identified expectancy of success and cost value and utility value as important to participants Notably, the same motivation constructs generally matter for research, practice, and research-informed practice, although practice-informed research was nearly absent from the data Participants cited strategies that are currently working to improve only some of the success and value categories



Conclusions

Expectancy value theory provides a useful framework for understanding faculty choices in the research–practice cycles required for change and innovation in engineering education Our findings indicate that in addition to improving individuals' competence with critical research and teaching practices, our field should also support collective efficacy and value beliefs

Faculty Motivation: A Gateway to Transforming Engineering Education

The alignment of instruction with the content of standards and assessments is the key mediating variable separating the policy of standards-based reform (SBR) from the outcome of improved student achievement. Few studies have investigated SBR’s effects on instructional alignment, and most have serious methodological limitations. This research uses content analyses of state standards and assessments and survey data on more than 27,000 teachers’ instruction in mathematics, science, and English/language arts (ELA) to investigate changes in instructional alignment between 2003 and 2009. Fixed-effects models indicate that alignment in grades K–12 mathematics increased by approximately 0.19–0.65 standard deviations, depending on the grade and target. Alignment also increased to grades K–12 standards in ELA and grades 3–8 standards in science, though the magnitudes were smaller. Multiple alternative specifications support the findings of increased alignment. Implications for research and SBR policy are discussed.

/pdf/instructional-alignment-under-no-child-left-behind-cichxmdbt9.pdf

Lars Mosesson

Papers

Are we asking the right questions