How to Transform a Department of Mathematics
By: David Bressoud @dbressoud
The Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) and American Mathematical Society (AMS) have just published Transformational Change Efforts: Student Engagement in Mathematics through an Institutional Network for Active Learning, a report on Phase I of a National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored study of what it takes to implement and sustain active learning in undergraduate mathematics.
David Bressoud is DeWitt Wallace Professor Emeritus at Macalester College and Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences
I am reminded of a very old joke: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but it has to want to change. How many people does it take to change a mathematics department? In this case, it is very many, but it still has to want to change.
Pressures for change are many. The days when mathematics departments served as gate-keepers, ensuring that only the most worthy were allowed through, are long gone. Today, much of the pressure for change comes from above. Presidents, provosts, and deans are now unhappy when the mathematics department winnows the numbers allowed through to engineering or the sciences. This is especially true when it is predominantly white middle-class males who are permitted to proceed. But there are also pressures from the faculty, especially newer faculty who recognize existing inequities and know that there are better ways to teach and support students. And there are pressures from the students themselves who realize when existing systems and structures are not serving their needs.
In the 2015 CBMS survey, 60% of departments reported major changes to the kinds of pedagogy used in their classes, with 66% at least experimenting with active learning, 58% experimenting with inquiry based classes, and 58% trying out flipped classes. The 2015 Mathematical Association of America (MAA) study revealed that 42% of Ph.D.-granting departments recognize that active learning is very important, but only 13% consider themselves very good at implementing it.
But recognizing the need for change is not the same as knowing how to bring about beneficial and sustainable change. We are a long way from those naïve days of the 1990s when it was believed that a few dedicated faculty could discover a better way of teaching, implement a successful pilot project, and then be embraced by all. We now recognize that making real and meaningful change requires some measure of transformation of the department, and this requires buy-in and support at all levels. It requires systemic change, and this is hard.
Nevertheless, it can be done. The SEMINAL Project (Student Engagement in Mathematics through an Institutional Network for Active Learning) of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) has just published its initial report on what it means and what it takes for a department to embrace active learning: Transformational Change Efforts, published jointly by CBMS and the American Mathematical Society.
SEMINAL is being run in three phases. The first phase, reported in this volume, looked at six public universities that had successfully made the transition to active learning. The book begins by describing the case studies undertaken at each of these universities, revealing the variety of ways that active learning can be implemented and the variety of paths that have been taken to get there. In the eight chapters following the case studies, the authors distill the “Levers for Change,” insights into what they have learned.
The first of the levers investigates active learning mathematics itself: its rationale and evidence for its effectiveness, its various definitions and what this report chooses to mean by it, examples of and strategies for its implementation, and several of the challenges departments have faced as they implemented it.
The SEMINAL team identified the following as the tenets and classroom norms of active learning:
1. Students’ deep engagement in mathematical thinking,
2. Peer-to-peer interaction,
3. Instructors’ interest in and use of student thinking, and
4. Instructors’ attention to equitable and inclusive practices.
Each of these are then elaborated in this chapter.
The challenges that these six universities have faced are also interesting for their commonality:
· Instructor resistance to implementation,
· Impoverished (or a lack of) common vision of active learning,
· Pedagogical concerns in using active learning,
· Concerns about teaching evaluations, and
· Constraints to implementation and scalability.
This chapter by itself is worth the price of this book.
The second chapter looks at the role of leadership, first of all the chair, but then the role of the faculty and the role of the administration. It highlights the importance of building relationships across the university and grabbing opportunities that might be a crisis that is forcing change or might be a new college- or university-wide initiative. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of the chair in serving as the bridge between the concerns and priorities of the administration and the energy and enthusiasm of those faculty who will spear-head the change.
The MAA study Characteristics of Successful Programs in College Calculus had identified course coordination as one of the key components of the best calculus programs. The third chapter on levers in this report investigates what this looks like including the mechanics of coordination, the role of the coordinator, and the practicalities of starting it.
The next chapter delves into student experiences with active learning, based on surveys of and interviews with students in these courses. The report is very honest in recounting the variety of reactions, both positive and negative. It is especially effective in identifying potential pitfalls and suggesting ways to avoid them.
The fifth chapter on levers describes professional development. Most of this is focused on preparing graduate students to use active learning, but it also includes the training of undergraduate teaching assistants who can be an enormous and relatively inexpensive aid as active learning is brought into larger classes. This chapter also discusses support for faculty who are learning how to use active learning effectively.
The following chapter investigates the resources that these departments have relied upon. Foremost is, of course, funding, but this chapter also explores how to use hiring practices, instructional materials and classroom technology, physical space, teaching and learning centers, tutoring centers, placement decisions, and undergraduate peer support.
The seventh chapter under levers for change investigates culture and equity. The cultures of the university and of the department are among the great intangibles that play a significant role in openness to change and that must be taken into account when mapping out a route to sustainable change. The value of teaching, the basis for the department’s reputation, the department’s autonomy and composition, all of these play a role in what can be done and how it should be approached. Included here is the importance of local data and the power of establishing a community of practice, “a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” That concern or passion does not have to be active learning. Some of the most effective communities have rather focused broadly on teaching excellence.
A significant piece of the department’s culture is reflected in how its members think of equity. This chapter describes what it should mean, distinguishes it from diversity and inclusion, and discusses various collaborations with other organizations and structures on campus that may be of assistance.
The final chapter of this section looks at sustainability of active learning. Some of the case study universities have been practicing it for decades. Others are fairly new. But all are concerned that the practices they have implemented will be sustained. This cannot be done without consideration of the culture in which the changes are to be made. Reinholz and Apkarian (2018) have identified four frames through which to understand the culture of the department, frames adapted from the general literature on organizational change. They are
1. Structures. “The roles, responsibilities, practices, routines, and incentives that organize how people interact.”
2. Symbols. “The cultural artifacts, language, knowledge, myths, values, and vision that department members use to guide their reasoning.”
3. People. The “goals, agency, needs, and identities” of those within the department.
4. Power. This frame recognizes that interactions are “mediated by power, status, positioning, and political coalitions.”
After comparing the trajectories of the six case study departments, this chapter describes the phases of change: initiation, expansion, sustainability, and transformation.
This is the “how to” book for department leaders who recognize the need to move toward active learning or simply want to know more about what it would involve. The SEMINAL project began by studying these six departments. In Phase II it added nine more departments that wanted to initiate active learning, seeking to take the lessons described in this report and seeing how they could be applied to help those beginning this process. SEMINAL is already moving on to Phase III, now bringing in an additional twelve departments to apply what they have learned from both of the first two phases. A description of this program can be found at the SEMINAL website: https://www.aplu.org/projects-and-initiatives/stem-education/seminal.
References
Reinholz, D.L., and Apkarian, N. (2018). Four frames for systemic change in STEM departments. Iinternational Journal of STEM Education, 5(3). https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-018-0103-x
Smith, W.M., Voigt, M., Ström, A., Webb, D.c., and Martin, W.G. (2021). Transformational Change Efforts: Student Engagement in Mathematics through an Institutional Network for Active Learning. Providence, RI: CBMS and AMS. https://bookstore.ams.org/mbk-138/
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