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Xiaodong Zhang is a senior study director at Westat, a social science research organization
in Maryland. He is the principal investigator of the Effect of STEM Faculty Engagement in
MSP [the Math and Science Partnership]—A Longitudinal Perspective. As a research and
evaluation methodologist, his research covers elementary, secondary, and postsecondary
education in the areas of reading, mathematics, and science learning; teacher preparation
and compensation; assessment and accountability; and large-scale system educational re-
forms. Joseph McInerney is a senior researcher in Westat’s Education Studies Group. For
this research into STEM faculty engagement with teachers, he served as survey designer,
protocol developer, site visitor, and report writer. Previous to joining Westat, he was an
award-winning classroom teacher (Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and
Science Teaching), curriculum designer, and recipient of an Einstein Fellowship at the
National Science Foundation (1998–2002). Joy Frechtling is a Westat vice president and
associate director of Westat’s Education Studies Group. An expert in logic modeling meth-
ods, which connect theory with implementation and outcomes in evaluative research, she
directs a broad range of education research projects for state and federal agencies, primar-
ily evaluations of large-scale educational programs. She was a site visitor on this project.
This research is being supported by funding from the Research, Evaluation and Technical
Assistance grant under the National Science Foundations’s Math and Science Partnership
program. We wish to acknowledge four other Westat researchers on this project: Joan
Michie, John Wells, Atsushi Miyaka, and Glenn Nyre, as well as 10 STEM site visitors, and
five advisory panel members.
When STEM Faculty
Teach Teachers,
Who Learns?
24 Change • May/June 2010
By Xiaodong Zhang,
Joseph McInerney, and Joy Frechtling
Learning After
You Know
It All:
www.changemag.org25
We W i l l b e g i n W i t h a q u i z .
Question 1. For several summers, mathematics and science
faculty from a research university provided a professional de-
velopment institute on campus to schoolteachers in a project
designed to enhance teacher content knowledge. Participants
were asked to sum up their experience. A set of respondents de-
scribed the time as “invigorating,” “positive,” “most rewarding,”
and “enlightening.” One amplified: “It pushes me in new direc-
tions content-wise and pedagogically. It’s been fun—challenges
me.” Another said, “I am grateful for this. … I am a big learner
in the process.”
Which group of participants replied in such upbeat terms
about their experience?
A) K–12 teachers
B) University mathematics and science faculty
Question 2. For several summers, mathematics and science
faculty from a research university provided a professional de-
velopment institute on campus to teachers. Teacher participants
were asked if math and science faculty helped them more in
terms of content or pedagogical knowledge.
In general, which option did teacher respondents select?
A) Content knowledge
B) Pedagogical knowledge
How did you do? You may be surprised to learn that the cor-
rect answer to both quiz items is B. As researchers studying
a $400 million, five-year investment by the National Science
Foundation (NSF), we too were surprised by these findings.
In Question 1, the positive remarks originated from univer-
sity mathematicians and scientists. Faculty were commenting
on their encounter with teachers over several years in a project
designed to increase teacher content knowledge. Surprisingly,
these faculty members were relating what they gained from
teachers through summer workshops and other activities with
them and students. As anticipated, teachers were also positive,
but the reaction of disciplinary faculty was unexpected. In
Question 2, teachers did report learning content, but they said
that university mathematics and science faculty gave them more
pedagogical knowledge than content knowledge.
Both findings have implications for faculty development in
higher education.
th e nSF Ma t h a n d Sc i e n c e Pa r t n e r S h i P (MSP)
The NSF Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program is
a major research and development effort to improve K–12 stu-
dent achievement in mathematics and science. MSP projects
are expected to raise the achievement levels of all students and
significantly reduce achievement gaps in the mathematics and
science performance of various student populations.
The substantial engagement of science, technology, engineer-
ing, and mathematics (STEM) disciplinary faculty with school-
teachers is a hallmark of the MSP program. Traditionally, STEM
faculty are not part of teachers’ professional development. School
districts customarily use in-district supervisors, master teachers,
education faculty from local colleges, or even textbook authors to
provide them with that professional development.
The MSP emphasis on the special knowledge and skills of
STEM faculty in working with teachers represents a change
in business as usual. To underscore the importance of STEM
faculty involvement in teacher professional development, NSF
mandates that every MSP principal investigator be a disciplin-
ary faculty member. There are now 72 MSP projects nation-
ally; all are based at universities rather than within school
districts.
th e St u d y
With support from an NSF grant, we tested a central MSP
assumption: that disciplinary faculty have the knowledge that
schoolteachers need. So if faculty are substantially involved
with teachers, the chain of professional knowledge will be
strengthened, resulting in improved student achievement. For
five years (2003–08), we empirically examined this assump-
tion to determine how STEM faculty members were engaged
in MSP and if their involvement enhanced teacher quality and
increased student achievement.
Four questions anchored our study:
1. What has the MSP program done to engage and support
STEM faculty involvement?
2. What changes have occurred in the number of faculty in-
volved, the extent and variety of their involvement, and the na-
ture of their collaboration with other participants?
3. What are the effects of STEM faculty engagement on teach-
ers, students, and the faculty themselves?
4. What are the effects of that engagement on school districts
and universities?
This article primarily focuses on the third research ques-
tion—the effects of STEM faculty engagement on teachers and
faculty.
Our research consisted of two major components. The first
was multiyear case studies of eight MSP projects. Seven of the
eight cases were within doctoral-granting research universities,
as defined by the Carnegie Classification system. We visited the
eight sites over a period of three or four years (depending on the
cohort), observed STEM faculty training teachers, interviewed
faculty and teachers separately, and interviewed project leader-
ship. Two-person teams, each consisting of a researcher from
our study team and a mathematician or scientist from a non-
MSP university, conducted the annual multiple-day site visits.
In all, the case studies allowed us to observe and interview over
100 disciplinary faculty across four years.
26 Change • May/June 2010
Second, we collected data from all 48 MSP partnership proj-
ects via a common survey that we administered annually, which
provided the insights and opinions of the nearly 1,000 partici-
pating disciplinary faculty nationally. We then triangulated our
analysis by scrutinizing project-level evaluations.
co n t e x t o F Fa c u l t y en g a g e M e n t
The impediments to STEM faculty engagement in the MSP
were structural, logistical, cultural, and philosophical. They
included the perception that MSP activities were community
outreach rather than legitimate academic scholarship, the belief
that faculty members were “overextended,” and assumptions
about cultural differences between schools and universities. We
found that the projects met these challenges through a balance
of external and internal incentives and project activities that
benefitted faculty.
Tenure and promotion realities
Given their crucial importance in higher education, we stud-
ied the role of tenure and promotion policies at the participat-
ing institutions in depth. And we found that, as Ernest Boyer
pointed out in 1990, “almost all colleges pay lip service to the
trilogy of teaching, research and service, but when it comes to
making judgments about professional performance, the three
rarely are assigned equal merit.” In 2008, Jaeger and Thornton
suggested that recent decades have “socialized” faculty toward
research performance and away from public service, even at
institutions where service is part of the university’s mission.
In this environment, providing professional development
to teachers was regarded as a distant third priority compared
to research and teaching. One faculty respondent said, “Any
consideration of coupling the three areas (research, teaching,
and service) as equal is moving slower than a glacier.” Another
commented, “The most can be hoped for is—there is no reward
for doing this, but it is okay for you to do it.” Junior faculty
members, especially those on the tenure track, were often ac-
tively discouraged from participating in MSP activities lest they
sacrifice research time.
Although tenure and promotion policies are crucial to engag-
ing STEM faculty, most MSP projects were not specifically
designed to tackle that issue directly. Nevertheless, there were
a number of strategies that projects used effectively to increase
STEM faculty engagement in the absence of major changes in
institutional tenure and promotion policies.
Extrinsic incentives—necessary but insufficient
Participating faculty generally felt that the projects gener-
ously supported their involvement. All eight case study projects
offered stipends, and five provided release time. One depart-
ment chair stressed the importance of combining monetary
incentives and enlightened self-interest when recruiting faculty.
The money talked most loudly to the younger, less established,
non-tenure-track faculty. Stipends were for one or two months
for preparing for and teaching in the summer institutes.
Compared to stipends, release time was more difficult to ob-
tain, especially in institutions that were teaching-oriented. One
course release per term seemed to be typical. For one project,
MSP teaching counted as part of the teaching load; in others,
release time had to be negotiated. For example, one department
chair had to make a strong case with the administration to ar-
range for course buy-outs for faculty since at his institution,
release time was normally possible only for research.
Overall, faculty participants said that both stipends and re-
lease time were attractive incentives. But external incentives
were only part of the story.
Intrinsic incentives—the intellectual foundation for involvement
Some faculty—mostly those who were tenured and in senior
positions—were not concerned about the extrinsic rewards. One
PI offered the opinion that regardless of money or release time,
“the good nature of faculty is always needed to make up for any
insufficiency.” For such faculty, intrinsic motivations, such as a
desire to serve others and a love of teaching, were more power-
ful. Many participating faculty, especially those with school-
age children or grandchildren, said that they were concerned
about public education and wanted to serve. Others simply
enjoyed teaching.
Projects employed a number of strategies to appeal to the
participating faculty’s intrinsic motivations. A project evaluator
concluded that the key to engaging them was to use their time
judiciously, extend opportunities for collaboration, and take
their opinions into account.
Successful faculty engagement hinged on the balance of “the
practical piece and the learning piece.” For example, one project
provided STEM faculty with generous stipends and release time
(the practical piece) but also made extensive use of the National
Academy of Science’s How People Learn (the learning piece).
This substantive publication had face validity and provided a
persuasive intellectual scaffold that project leadership used to
engage the faculty; those we interviewed considered “HPL,” as
they called it, compelling reading and of great professional ben-
efit. The project also introduced HPL to teachers.
Meanwhile, other faculty had a steep learning curve because
their projects did not provide sufficient professional develop-
ment prior to placing them in front of schoolteachers. Project
leadership that first laid the intellectual groundwork for the
work reaped the benefits as the projects progressed.
Fa c u l t y Pa r t i c i Pa t i o n
The number of STEM faculty involved in the eight case
study projects varied from 8 to 50, with an average of 22 per
project. Data from all 48 projects show that all told, about 700
STEM faculty were involved in the projects annually, over 60
percent of whom were tenured. Depending on the length of the
summer institute, faculty participation usually involved two to
eight weeks over the summer. Seventy-five percent of the fac-
ulty spent over 40 hours in project activities annually, including
the 55 percent who devoted more than 80 hours.
Faculty participated in a variety of MSP activities, such as
developing the summer institute’s curriculum, instructing pre-
service and in-service teachers, and conducting research on
STEM education. The most common activity was conducting
workshops designed to increase teachers’ content and/or peda-
gogical knowledge. “Teaching teachers is the best part—the
reward,” one professor said.
www.changemag.org27
Faculty members’ direct involvement with K–12 students was
limited to infrequent school visits and science fairs. The ex-
pectation of most projects was that the effect of STEM faculty
involvement with teachers would filter through to students.
co l l a b o r a t i o n
Another quiz:
Question 3. In general, what term best describes faculty reac-
tion after preparing for and completing the first year of summer
institutes for teachers?
A) Exhaustion
B) Exhilaration
C) Both of the above
As you might suspect, answer C is correct. Respondents cited
time pressures, multiple meetings, disagreements on which con-
tent to include in the institutes, and personality conflicts. A ge-
ologist reflecting on her first year in a project noted, “I lead two
lives, research and education. It can be scattered.” A chemist
from the same project said, “It is a tough job to be stuck in the
middle—everything is a multiple of two—two of everything,
including meetings.”
The summer institutes did not appear like Athena fully real-
ized from the head of Zeus or from the crania of STEM faculty.
They were cobbled together through equal measures of inspira-
tion and frustration, big-theme design and attention to detail,
disappointment and satisfaction.
Sometimes drafting the curriculum led to conflicts, especially
if it brought together people from several universities and school
districts. When education faculty and STEM faculty attempted to
work together, a member of the latter group said, “We speak a dif-
ferent language.” One professor commented, with an equal blend
of humor and frustration, about building a common syllabus:
“The problem is all the disciplines have too many ‘big ideas.’”
But the give-and-take among faculty and between faculty
and teachers was also deeply rewarding to many participants. A
Co-PI noted that “reciprocal learning” was key to the satisfac-
tion of all of them.
eF F e c t S o n te a c h e r S
Faculty participated in MSP with an intention to change
teachers. They accomplished this goal. Teachers welcomed
STEM faculty instruction even more than that of participating
education faculty. And faculty contributed not just by improv-
ing the scientific sophistication of lead teachers (project-level
pre- and post-assessments indicated substantial improvement
in teacher content knowledge), which we expected, but also by
assessing curricula with college readiness in mind.
But we were surprised when teachers sometimes said that
STEM faculty transmitted subject pedagogy to an even greater
degree than content. Teachers spoke of faculty modeling the es-
sence of their disciplines just by their questioning style, constant
probing, and explication of underlying concepts. “They ask
questions—lots of them. They are not trying to sell something, a
book or a trend. They value education,” said one teacher.
Teachers also remarked on the difference their engagement
with STEM faculty would make in their personal confidence.
A math teacher noted, “The association with math professors
makes us look better and feel better.” And another: “We are
thrilled about their involvement. It shows what we are doing is
valued and respected.”
Of course, it was not a perfect picture. One frustrated teacher
remarked, “He [the professor] wants four different ways of
solving the same problem. It is very different from what we
were used to. We just stare at him—it was a mass confusion.”
But what he found confusing, others found stimulating: “The
other professional development never caused me to think much
because they were too easy and often dealt with what we cover
in class,” said one teacher. “This is more about problem-solving
and application to the real world.”
While teachers reported changes in instructional practices,
our observations of them in their own classroom indicated that
although changes were in place for some, they were just begin-
ning for others. Even so, teacher responses overall were posi-
tive across our eight case sites over four years.
eF F e c t S o n SteM Fa c u l t y
As we have said, perhaps the biggest surprise in our research
was that participating STEM faculty increasingly acknowledged
learning from the MSP experience. Faculty cited three dimensions
of learning in particular: 1) becoming better teachers themselves,
2) acquiring a deeper understanding of current and future school-
teachers, and 3) becoming familiar with the learning sciences.
Becoming better teachers
A major but unintended effect of MSP involvement on
STEM faculty was that they became better teachers, with a
more active, student-centered, and collaborative teaching style.
Participating in the MSP taught them how to probe for prior
knowledge, initiate discussions of key concepts, have stu-
dents work in teams to complete challenges and labs, assume
a questioning stance by rarely providing answers, and employ
effective questioning techniques with reluctant students. One
professor said, “A major personal ‘ah hah’ was the discovery of
best practices in teaching.” Another remarked, “I never used
hands-on methods or group work before, but found it really gets
the concepts across to my college students.”
Almost all case study projects provided some forms of fac-
ulty development for their MSP faculty. In some cases the train-
ing was periodic, with meetings or workshops during which
faculty discussed issues such as course content, methods of pre-
sentation, texts, curriculum development, and assessment.
Other professional development was more systematic. One
project organized biweekly seminars involving STEM faculty,
education faculty, and graduate students. Participants discussed
the relevant literature about best practices, including what
courses needed to be offered and which methods needed to be
used with classroom teachers. A senior STEM faculty said,
“This is the methods class that I’ve never had before.” Another
project devoted the entire summer before the teams were
assigned to work with schools to providing professional devel-
opment for faculty members and teacher leaders centered on
pedagogy and exemplary middle-school curricular materials.
28 Change • May/June 2010
Acquiring a deeper understanding of teachers
One PI, a chemist, bluntly pointed out: “STEM faculty are
typically clueless [about teachers]. They don’t understand the
content needs of K–12 teachers. They don’t know where to
start. And once they’ve gotten started, they don’t know where to
go.” So one professor’s remark about the professional develop-
ment of faculty was particularly resonant: “We have become
learners ourselves.” Faculty learned from teacher leaders about
school contexts, student populations, and state curriculum stan-
dards and assessments.
Some STEM faculty came to an MSP project wanting to
“model excellent teaching” for K-12 teachers. But doctoral
education is designed to produce researchers, not educators.
One faculty member reflected in retrospect: “We were way too
naïve. We thought we could take content experts and mix them
with high school teachers. Teachers would suck up the content
that STEM faculty would provide with innovative pedagogy.
Well, it works only when you have a perfect faculty—which is
rare. What we found is that a typical STEM faculty member is
not comfortable with high school teaching.”
We found that faculty were more effective when they un-
derstood teachers as adult learners and not as college students.
Adults do not want to deal with hierarchical university struc-
tures. They seek professionally useful information tied to past
experiences and universal reference points. Adults generally
want the assurance that what they are learning will have a prac-
ticable application in the future.
Project faculty by and large came to treat the teachers as
adult learners, eventually. In the process, they gained a deeper
appreciation of current and future schoolteachers. When we
asked teachers to describe how MSP faculty were different from
other professional-development providers, one described them
as “compatriots” in teaching and learning science. Another
said that the project faculty treated teachers respectfully as
“partners” and “not as objects to be fed curriculum.”
Becoming familiar with the learning sciences
An additional major benefit for the faculty was to learn about
key findings from social science research, especially from the
field of science and mathematics education. One faculty mem-
ber commented, “I was under the mistaken impression that
pedagogical research was at a lower level and was paper thin. I
now have an appreciation for the importance and depth of peda-
gogical research.”
Some faculty entered the project confessing minimal knowl-
edge of STEM education literature. Pedagogical practices such
as the following were new to them:
• Probing student prior knowledge;
• Addressing student preconceptions;
• Recognizing the persistence of student misconceptions;
• Understanding the problem of cognitive load; and
• Systematically examining student work.
However, faculty were soon convinced that such instructional
strategies had potential in the classroom and in a variety of pro-
fessional settings as well.
One project helped to channel faculty experience into schol-
arly research by bringing together STEM faculty, education
faculty, and PhD candidates to engage in STEM pedagogical
research. Some faculty published articles on subject-specific
pedagogical research and on their experiences with course rede-
sign in journals such as the National Association of Research in
Science Teaching. Others wrote science-education grant propos-
als. In fact, project participation was the vehicle by which some
faculty discovered the breadth of science-education research
funded by NSF.
ch a n g e b y SteM Fa c u l t y : gr a d u a l ,
in e v i t a b l e , a n d W e l c o M e
At first, faculty participating within our longitudinal study
did not realize that they, too, needed to change. These realiza-
tions were gradual and eventually welcomed by faculty with
exposure to motivated classroom teachers. The powerful im-
plication for STEM faculty development is that when faculty
deepen teachers’ knowledge, teachers are not the only beneficia-
ries. Faculty gain as well.
We began with a question, but we end with a suggestion. If
you are a STEM professor seeking new approaches for working
with undergraduates in your own classroom, offer to plan and
teach math or science to teachers next summer. Based on our
five years of research data, you will work very hard, collaborate
with like-minded peers and teachers, and reap professional and
personal benefits.
The NSF MSP program coordinates its effort with the
Mathematics and Science Partnerships program of the U.S.
Department of Education (http://www.ed-msp.net). C
n Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered:
Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
n Bransford, J. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind,
experience, and school. Washington, DC: National
Academy Press.
n Jaeger, A.J., and Thornton, C.H. (2008). Neither
honor nor compensation: Faculty and public service.
Educational Policy, 20(2), 345–366.
n MSP Knowledge Management and Dissemination
Project (2009). Knowledge reviews: Involving STEM
disciplinary faculty in deepening teacher/teacher leader
content knowledge. Available at http://www.mspkmd.net
n National Science Foundation: NSF’s MSP at a
glance. Available at http://www.nsf.gov/ehr/MSP
n Zhang, X., McInerney, J., Frechtling, J., Michie,
J., Wells, J., Miyaoka, A., and Nyre, G. (2009). Who
benefits? The effect of STEM faculty engagement in
MSP: A final report. (Prepared for the National Science
Foundation). Rockville, MD: Westat.
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