"I got in trouble": A case study of faculty "doing school" during professional development

TL;DR

This case study examines how physics faculty participating in professional development workshops struggle to replicate effective student interactions, highlighting challenges in translating workshop learning into classroom practice.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth analysis of faculty behavior during a workshop task, revealing gaps in their ability to emulate desirable student interactions and informing future professional development strategies.

Findings

Faculty poorly coordinated during the task

Faculty's sense-making did not align with desired student behaviors

Implications for improving professional development sessions

Abstract

Professional development workshops are commonly used to promote the adoption of research-based instructional strategies among physics and astronomy faculty. After learning about such strategies, faculty are often motivated to modify and adapt them within their own classrooms, but prior research shows they may be underprepared to do so in ways likely to maintain the positive student outcomes the designers were able to foster. In this paper, we analyze the experiences of a focal group of faculty during one session of the Physics and Astronomy New Faculty Workshop, where they are asked to engage in a task as mock physics students. We compare their experiences to student behaviors documented in others' research, and find that their group coordination and sense-making poorly represent the kinds of interactions our community would encourage them to foster in their own students. We briefly discuss the implications of these preliminary findings for professional development and our plans for future research.