=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2128/designsci2
|storemode=property
|title=Research-Practice Partnerships Supporting Adoption of Active Learning
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2128/designsci2.pdf
|volume=Vol-2128
|authors=Elizabeth S. Charles,Alain Breuleux,Rob Cassidy,Chris Whittaker,Kevin Lenton,Jeremie Choquette
}}
==Research-Practice Partnerships Supporting Adoption of Active Learning==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2128/designsci2.pdf
Research-Practice Partnerships Supporting Adoption of Active
Learning
Elizabeth S. Charles, Dawson College, SALTISE, echarles@dawsoncollege.qc.ca
Alain Breuleux, McGill University, Faculty of Education, alain.breuleux@mcgill.ca
Rob Cassidy, Concordia University, Centre for Teaching & Learning, rob.cassidy@concordia.ca
Chris Whittaker, Dawson College, Physics Department, cwhittaker@dawsoncollege.qc.ca
Kevin Lenton, Vanier College, Physics Department, lentonk@vaniercollege.qc.ca
Jeremie Choquette, McGill University, PhD student Physics, jeremie.choquette@mail.mcgill.ca
Abstract: Challenging the “business as usual” approach to instructional design and professional
development is a transactional model of practice change–Research-Practice Partnership (RPP). This
approach proposes that adoption requires gaining mutual understanding and involves joint work and
shared communication. In turn, joint work requires stakeholders to create new practices that allow
for boundary crossings, which often involves mediating tools. This presentation reports on RPP
program, consisting of three sequential grants, that have an overarching goal of supporting the
integration of evidence-based instruction – i.e., Active Learning – into the pedagogical design and
practices of post-secondary instructors. These case studies detail the development of an online
platform that allows stakeholders –researchers, teachers and instructional designers– to
communicate across boundaries and engage in the joint work of designing solutions that are adapted
to varied content and context.
We report on a Research Practitioner Partnership (RPP; Coburn & Penuel, 2016) program that has as its goal the
integration of evidence-based Active Learning (AL) instruction in higher education. The intervention involves the
development of an online platform, and tools, that allows stakeholders –researchers, teachers and instructional
designers– to communicate across boundaries and to engage in the joint work of designing solutions that are adapted
to their content and context. This case study investigates both the RPP process itself, as well as how the platform and
tools developed to accomplish the joint work. In particular, how the tools meditate and bring together principles from
research and the documented implementations of practitioners. In turn, the jointly designed tools facilitate the design
of new materials and further tools; and, at the same time provide researchers opportunities to examine how the
enactment work is achieved.
Description of the Intervention
Our intervention is an online platform that consists of co-designed instructional resources and frameworks that are
part of an AL support program - growing out of a networked professional learning community initiative, SALTISE
(authors; https://www.saltise.ca/). To make sense of these resources/data, collected from over 30 college and
university instructors, we categorized them into an ecology that generates a principled taxonomy of student-centred
active learning instruction – approaches, strategies, activities, and scenarios (see Figure 1). Approaches are the most
general orienting principles of active learning instruction. They do not describe what the teacher or students will be
doing, but rather propose how a pedagogy will unfold - e.g., flipped classroom (Tucker, 2012). Strategies are also
general, however, they describe specific steps or sequences of tasks (i.e., script) that both teacher and students will
engage in. They are grounded in the educational literature and often the focus of research, e.g., peer instruction (PI,
Mazur, 1997), jigsaw (Aronson, 2002). Activities, by contrast, are the instructional units that teachers prepare. They
are content-laden, specific to a course, thereby, idiosyncratic. In student-centered active learning instruction, we have
documented that activities often employ and link together strategies that engage students in joint-work. Lastly,
scenarios, bring individual activities together into a coherent sequence that span different time scales - i.e., a single
lesson, several weeks (a module), or even a semester-long project.
Our platform, in addition to presenting this ecology, provides a framework to explore the workflows that
make up the AL Activities. The framework works to reveal the relationships between the instructional components
that include strategies (with scripts) and tasks that do not have a specified script. They also detail how these
components are linked and orchestrated into an Activity. The framework is represented in terms of an annotated
workflow that describes when and how the learning unfolds and who is responsible for which actions (Figure 2a). It
provides information about each component, in particular, identifying the Strategies involves (Figure 2b) and
incorporate the embedded scripts (Figure 2c). Also included is information from the literature along with practical
advice on how to implement them (Figure 2d). Strategies are at the heart of the ecology because they describe the
“mechanisms” for the engagement – cognitive, socio-cultural (joint work) or psycho-social (motivational).
Interestingly, elements of their scripts are also the focus of research.
Approaches
Appoperationalizes
Scripts Strategies
S Stra
uses
made up of
multiple
Workflows Activities m Tasks
W Acti Tas
made up of multiple
m
Scenarios
Sce
Figure 1. The ecology of instructional units forming a taxonomy within AL pedagogies.
In summary, the platform is a principles-based repository of AL learning objects as well as a tool for building
new instruction. It is useful to practitioners and researchers on their own. For practitioners, the resources are easily
browsed and navigated according to multiple criteria from a practitioner's perspective. Using the research literature to
link components with typical problems of practice encountered by instructors (e.g., students not preparing for class)
as well as typical general learning objectives (e.g., deeper understanding course content). More importantly, the
platform’s social interface promotes networking and identifies practitioners who have extensive experience
implementing the AL components and place them in reach of those looking for advice (i.e., potential for sharing of
experiences among peers). Thereby, the platform creates an environment that facilitates meaningful engagement with
all these resources. For researchers, on the other hand, the platform and framework allow researchers and educational
developers to gain insight on and learn from the practice-based knowledge developed by instructors (Dougherty,
2016).
2a
2b
2c
2d
Figure 2. The framework describing the instructional activity including the workflow and the activity’s components.
Information About the Context
The intervention is part of a larger initiative consisting of three phases and funded by three sequential grants (research
and infrastructure), started in 2015. They have brought together educators from five post-secondary institutions within
a major city in the Province of Quebec, Canada. Constituted as a research practice partnership (RPP; Coburn & Penuel,
2016), the team is composed of seven researchers and four graduate students who work directly with our network of
practitioners. The researchers involved in this project each have years of experience in the Learning Sciences and
STEM education. Over 30 practitioners selected for phases one and two were a purposeful sampling of early adopters
(or power users) who, on their own accord or as part of other research projects, have engaged in designing, developing
and implementing pedagogical innovations in their own classrooms, in a sustained manner over several years; also in
STEM education.
Active learning pedagogical approach
Educational research shows that engaging students in meaningful tasks are more likely to lead to deeper learning.
Instructional approaches that go under the headings of student-centered or active learning (AL) aim to do just that. AL
instruction is based on a social theory of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978). It views knowledge as
being constructed by the learner, and formal learning as a process promoted through participation and meaning
making. AL approaches require students to engage in the doing and application of the knowledge, as well as the
reflecting on the doing and application (Bonwell & Eison, 1991). As such, this pedagogical innovative require
instructors to design activities that engage students at an appropriate level for learning (Chi & Wylie, 2014).
Currently, AL pedagogies are poorly defined and include everything and anything that changes the landscape
from teacher centered to student-centered (Arthurs & Kreager, 2017). At the broadest scale, are ways that allow for a
change to the business as usual approaches to instruction. For instance, flipped classroom (Tucker, 2012), which take
a clear stance on content being moved outside of the classroom and reposition the where learning starts; and, Just-in-
Time Teaching (JiTT; Novak, 2011), which reframes the teacher’s role and responsibilities. Also at a large scale are
the pedagogies that prescribe curricular approaches. Examples include Problem-Based Learning (PBL; e.g., Hmelo
& Barrow, 2006), Inquiry-based Instruction (Edelson, Gordin, & Pea, 1999), to list a few. These pedagogies call for
the inclusion of authentic and meaningful tasks, problems, and challenges rooted in designed activities involving
specific routines and sequences of tasks. Often these require significant time commitments on the part of the students.
On the smaller scales are the short interventions that sit alongside modified lecture approaches and promote deeper
thinking and reflection. These straddle the fence between individual and collective work. Well-known examples
include methods such as jigsaw (Aronson, 1978), think-pair-share (Lyman, 1987), which has gained broad attention
under the title of Peer Instruction (Mazur, 1997) after being adopted and promoted by Harvard physics professor, Eric
Mazur. At the smallest unit are descriptions of the tasks themselves, which suggests the objective of the work that
students will engage around - concept mapping, one-minute paper and a host of others. While these themselves are
not strategies, for the sake of simplicity we do so on our platform.
Research shows that AL instruction, not accounting for the differences described above, compared to
traditional instruction, can significantly decrease failure rates in STEM courses (Freeman, Eddy, McDonough, Smith,
Okoroafor, Jordt & Wenderoth, 2014), particularly for populations traditionally underrepresented in STEM (Olson &
Riordan, 2012); and, increases students’ learning and achievement (Prince, 2004). In particular, student-centred
instruction has a positive impact on critical thinking, motivation and communication skills (e.g., Kim, Sharma, Land
& Furlong, 2013); the use of metacognitive processes such as decision making (Lin, Hmelo, Kinzer & Secules, 1999);
and, the development of positive classroom cultures (e.g., Engle & Conant, 2002).
Problems of Changing Practice: Transfer vs. Transaction
Even with such promising results, the adoption of AL instruction has been slow at the post-secondary levels, with
multiple roadblocks that prevent its sustained development (e.g., Kirkland & Sutch, 2009). A major element of these
obstacles involves the challenges of changing teacher and learner practices. Pedagogical shifts remain remarkably
difficult to implement in sustainable ways (Henderson & Dancy, 2008; Henderson et al., 2011; Kirkland & Sutch,
2009). Adding to the challenge, AL requires considerably more knowledge about the intersection of pedagogy,
learning and content, compared to teacher-centered methods - i.e., the overlap of pedagogical content knowledge
(PCK; Koehler & Mishra, 2009). In many ways changing classroom practices mirrors the dimensions involved in the
adoption of ICT (e.g., Law, Pelgrum, & Plomp, 2008). Such complex expertise rarely develops over the course of a
workshop or resides in individual teachers. In essence, the methods and metaphors used for professional development
are often linear and transmissive rather than non-linear (emergent) and transactional.
Research Practice Partnership Methods
This research uses a transactional model of changing practice–RPP model. Arguably, it is an effort to bridge the gap
between research and its adoption by practice. The creation and implementation of effective, sustainable, and scalable
educational interventions can only be achieved through a new metaphor that puts researcher and practitioners in close
contact as laid out in DBIR approach (Fishman, Penuel, Allen, Cheng & Sabelli, 2013). RPP model positively re-
positions practitioners. They are no longer considered the end-point for the uptake of research, rather, they are source
of insight into the solution. “For researchers to make participants’ own perspectives on how to improve instruction at
scale the basis for a theory of action is an unusual move” (Penuel & Coburn, 2015, p. 191). RPP work involves cycles
of planning-doing-studying-acting. These iterative cycles involve developing indicators of success both in the
development, design, testing and refining phases (Penuel, Allen, Coburn & Farrell, 2015). Adding to the challenge of
coordinating across partners are the different time scales on which research and practice operate. Practice can move
quickly because there is no call for testing, while research often moves slowly because of the rigour demanded.
In focusing on “problems of practice,” RPP interventions involve the use of co-design approaches to develop
educational solutions, anchor the collaboration; and, examine and design for long-term mutualistic collaborations
between researchers and practitioners including the joint work at multiple boundaries (Penuel, et al., 2015). Penuel
and colleagues identify the socio-cultural processes considered boundary crossing and boundary practices as
productive constructs and concepts for understanding the relationship between research and practice. A boundary
crossing is an event, whereas, a boundary practices are “new routines that bridge the practices of researchers and those
of practitioners as they engage in joint work” (p. 190). To accomplish the hybrid work done as part of these new
activity systems tools are developed, what others have referred to as boundary objects (Star & Griesemer, 1989)
facilitating researcher-practitioner transactions. Within the RPPs, these boundary objects (both material and
procedural) have interpretive flexibility and provide organizational structure. Objects in our context should be
considered boundary tools because they are intended to mediate the boundary crossings.
Relationship Between RPP and Our Intervention
The value of our platform, and more specifically, the workflow framework is that, like a Rosetta Stone, it allows for
boundary crossings. The framework attempts to transform the design of the instructional activities into a common
language, understandable by researchers and practitioners alike - i.e., a boundary tool. Our boundary tools allow the
various participants in the RPPs to serve the different information needs and workflows of both instructors and
researchers and thereby co-interpret and collaboratively transform activity/object through the co-design process. The
design of the activity serves as an artefact that is continually refined, transformed and adapted to capture the knowledge
co-production and exchange processes. In the case of our intervention, the platform is a boundary tool that allows
researchers and practitioners to engage in the boundary practices that includes the cycle of developing and designing
new instructional practices based on both the literature (research) and implemented activities (practice). See Figure 3.
Figure 3. Instructional design boundary practices, joint work of practitioner and researcher within a common tool.
Explanation of Challenges and Opportunities
The main challenge that this type of project faces is the sustainable transformation of practice. A second, related
challenge is scaling of the intervention from its initial “protected” environment (where funding and support are present
at an unusual level) to the more habitual environment. We see these two challenges --and the solutions we are
exploring-- as intimately related. The conjecture that we are exploring in practice is that to be sustainable and scalable,
innovations need to be meaningful to the members of the larger community of practice, and this is best achieved by
involving practitioners as early and as deeply as possible in the transformation of practice. In our case, the co-design
of instructional resources and frameworks --new tools to support AL-- is a process of making concrete, visible, and
available some of the initial attempts by practitioners to engage in AL, “an intervention that is developed in practice
by participants in that practice, rather than in a controlled laboratory” (Penuel, 2014). In relation to the frameworks of
communities of practice and cultural-historical activity theory, it corresponds to the reification (Wenger, 1998) of the
germ cell of innovative practices (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). In that context, scaling is less problematic, especially
in relation to the classic problem of ensuring fidelity of an intervention that originates from an “in vitro” experiment:
because we are developing tools within the integral practices of instructors, the collective zone of development for
other practitioners is manageable (i.e., proximal), and uptake and positive mutual adaptations (Penuel et al., 2011) are
more likely. Another perspective on the challenges and opportunities of this kind of work is to think of our co-design
as a form of re-mediation (i.e., providing new mediational tools; see Sannino, Daniels, & Gutierrez, 2009) of teaching
in support of AL.
Connection to Conference Theme
While this project is not directly related to the first part of the Conference theme, Rethinking learning in the digital
age. It is directly related to the second part of making the Learning Sciences count. The entire process of RPP is
intended to find ways to integrate research into practice by changing the metaphors of transfer into ones of
transactional actions. Working in a RPP model organized around co-design of boundary tools, members of different
stakeholder communities learn from each other: teachers about the learning sciences, researchers about the practical
aspects and constraints of embedded teaching practice, and faculty developers about new methods of working with
both teachers and learning scientists. Connecting these three communities allows for the multidirectional knowledge
exchange that is critical to the overall integration of research knowledge into teaching practice. We believe the iterative
and recursive cycle, at the heart of the RPP program, allows us to address both research questions and authentic
problems of practice thereby making what is learnt in the Learning Sciences count for practitioners and what is learnt
in practice count for the Learning Sciences researchers.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the following grants: Entente Canada-Québec grant ALPIC (2014-17) & SALTISE/S4
(2017-18); Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grants: (1) SSHRC-CCSIF Application title:
Leveraging New Paradigms and Disruptive Technologies to Successfully Orchestrate Pedagogical Change (2015-17);
and, (2) SSHRC-Connections grant: Fostering a knowledge community: co-constructing and leveraging a digital
platform for STEAM education (2017-18). We wish to thank our colleagues, SALTISE research team, the
practitioners we interviewed, and graduate students who collect the observations and interviews: Chao Zhang,
Veronique Brule and Meghan Marshall.