Exploring the Dynamics of Organizational Learning: How an Instructional Reform Effort Influenced Teaching-related Organizational Memory Processes

Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for noncommercial purposes by any means, provided that the above copyright notice appears on all copies. The research reported in this working paper was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (award no. DUE-0942438). Any opinions, findings, or conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies, WCER, or cooperating institutions. Consider an instructor sitting down to plan an upcoming course in organic chemistry for the first time. What information and related resources will she draw upon when making the syllabus, selecting course materials, deciding how best to use the course website, and choosing her pedagogical approach? Most likely she will consider features of the existing curriculum, including selected texts, prior instructors' notes and slides, course level, and student background. However, while research exists on curriculum design in postsecondary settings (Lattuca & Stark, 2009), little is known about the types of information and resources that come into play as instructors make critical decisions that will shape students' instructional experiences. This is a critical issue in light of efforts to improve how courses are planned and taught at the undergraduate level so that they better reflect the pedagogical principles of what is known about how people learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). These efforts are especially focused on encouraging faculty to adopt teaching practices based on these principles in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, which many view as central to the nation's economic vitality and competitiveness (National Research Council, 2010). While evidence is beginning to suggest that some change in faculty teaching is taking place, 2012), most researchers agree that widespread adoption of inquiry-based teaching has not yet occurred (e.g., Fairweather, 2008). As a result, researchers are examining the reasons why the adoption of inquiry-based teaching methods appears to be slow and spotty, with initial evidence pointing to organizational factors such as constraints on time and a culture in the disciplines that inhibits faculty from adopting new teaching practices (Henderson & Dancy, 2007; Hora, 2012). This promising line of inquiry underscores the importance of understanding the nature of faculty work as it occurs " in the wild, " as opposed to abstract theorizing about the nature of organizational change (Bastedo, 2012). Organizational learning theory is an approach that holds promise as an analytic lens through which we …