Beyond teaching methods: highlighting physics faculty's strengths and agency

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new 'asset-based agentic paradigm' for understanding physics faculty teaching, emphasizing faculty ideas, values, and agency over specific teaching methods, supported by three case studies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel paradigm combining teaching principles and faculty agency frameworks, shifting focus from methods to faculty assets and agency in physics education research.

Findings

Frameworks of teaching principles and faculty agency effectively characterize teaching practices.

The asset-based agentic paradigm offers a comprehensive view of faculty teaching.

Case studies demonstrate the paradigm's applicability to real faculty perspectives.

Abstract

Much work in physics education research (PER) characterizes faculty teaching practice in terms of whether faculty use specific named PER-based teaching methods, either with fidelity or with adaptation; we call this research paradigm the "teaching-method-centered paradigm." However, most faculty do not frame their teaching in terms of which particular named methods they use, but rather in terms of their own ideas and values, suggesting that the teaching-method-centered paradigm misses key features of faculty teaching. These key features include the productive ideas that faculty have about student learning and faculty agency around teaching. We present three case studies of faculty talking about their teaching, and analyze them in terms of two theoretical frameworks: a framework of teaching principles (How Learning Works) and a framework of faculty agency (Self-Determination Theory). We show that these frameworks well characterize key features of faculty teaching practices and agency, and can be combined in a new paradigm for modeling faculty teaching which we call an "asset-based agentic paradigm." We therefore encourage physics education researchers to move beyond the teaching-method-centered paradigm and think about faculty teaching using an asset-based agentic paradigm.