Instructors are nodes in a complex, interacting network, and faculty development efforts need to maintain a simultaneous focus on three interacting levels: (1) the individual, (2) the department, and (3) the institution. Sustainable change requires that we focus on building support networks in the larger academic ecosystem to foster institutional changes in teaching practices.

Previous research on the effectiveness of different faculty development efforts found two early approaches to be clearly inadequate: top-down demands from administrators and disseminating “best curriculums” (Ebert-May et al., 2011; Henderson et al., 2011; Turpen et al., 2016). Specific barriers faculty face when embracing effective teaching methods include the lack of familiarity with and opportunity to learn new methods, lack of support when changing courses, and lack of recognition for making successful changes (Dancy & Henderson, 2008). To address these issues, Henderson et al. (2011) recommended that professional development programs focus on changing faculty teaching beliefs and providing long-term support and recognize the university as a complex system in which faculty operate.

CAUSE operationalized the theoretical foundation of faculty change. CAUSE both implemented the EPIC model of adoption of new teaching practices—as CAUSE involves exposure, persuasion, identification, commitment, and implementation (Aragón et al., 2018)—and specifically addressed the three major conclusions of Henderson et al.’s (2011) work. The CAUSE program involved a two-year commitment consisting of two phases. The exploration phase increased awareness of evidence-based teaching practices, while the implementation phase provided practice and feedback on changes to teaching. To address the complexity of the university system in which each faculty member is situated, we incorporated a systems approach (Austin, 2011), which recognizes structural differences within an organization, the need for human resources, and political actions. We addressed the structural features of the university by acknowledging the cultural differences between departments and recruiting faculty leads from each department who could navigate those differences. To leverage human resources, we purposely created a community of support and provided objective assessment of teaching practices for each participant to counter possible departmental politics.

The program was conducted at a large R1 institution and was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for three years. Each year we recruited teams of two to three faculty from each of seven STEM departments (biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, psychology, and public health) to become CAUSE Fellows. Over the course of the three years, we recruited a total of 45 faculty. Faculty were recruited by the CAUSE Fellow acting as the departmental lead in that department. The departmental lead selected faculty based on their openness to try new teaching methods. The CAUSE program recruited primarily teaching-track faculty, as they teach large introductory STEM courses and have the opportunity to impact the learning of the greatest number of undergraduates. Faculty who chose to participate made a two-year commitment to the program.

The exploration phase consisted of biweekly meetings facilitated by a faculty member who was engaged in biology education research and was experienced in using evidence-based teaching practices. Though there are a plethora of terms associated with active learning teaching methods (Driessen et al., 2020; Lombardi et al., 2021), we defined evidence-based teaching practices as those identified and reported in our earlier work that created the classroom observation tool, the Practical Observation Rubric To Assess Active Learning (PORTAAL; Eddy et al., 2015). The PORTAAL tool was the result of an extensive literature review of papers in the cognitive sciences, learning sciences, and discipline-based education research fields that presented empirical evidence of a defined set of in-class teaching practices that significantly improved student learning. This definition is almost identical to that presented by Jacobson and Cole (2020). Though evidence-based teaching practices may encompass both in- and out-of-classroom activities, PORTAAL practices are confined to in-class activities. CAUSE Fellows read and discussed many of these papers, and each practice was described. Subsequently, Fellows were encouraged to select a few practices they felt comfortable using and were appropriate for their courses. Meetings during the implementation phase focused on group discussions of successes and how to deal with barriers as CAUSE Fellows incorporated the new practices. To provide objective feedback for Fellows on their teaching practices, class recordings were coded each term using PORTAAL (Eddy et al., 2015). An aggregate PORTAAL report for all Fellows and individual PORTAAL reports were generated and distributed at the end of each quarter.

In previous research, we analyzed the change in implementation of 14 PORTAAL practices between the first time a Fellow taught a course while in CAUSE and the last time they taught that same course. We found that the Fellows increased the implementation of three practices while decreasing the implementation of two practices (Jackson et al., 2022). Given these quantitative results, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of Fellows’ experiences in the CAUSE program and their use of evidence-based teaching practices. Therefore, we conducted a series of interviews with a subset of CAUSE Fellows. A qualitative thematic analysis of these interviews allowed us to address the following research questions:

Which aspects of CAUSE made it a useful program for participants?

We identified multiple codes to characterize interview data and organized the codes into five themes (Table 2). For all but one theme (respect for students underlies implementation), all six interviewees discussed at least one of the codes under each theme. To answer our research questions, we will describe overall themes from the interviews and present excerpts to support the themes. Excerpts from faculty may be lightly edited for clarity and to preserve anonymity.

In the preceding sections we have used excerpts from multiple Fellows as examples for each theme. We will now show how all five themes were found in one Fellow’s remarks about the most commonly discussed and controversial evidence-based teaching practice: randomly calling on students to give answers during class. The data in the figure below (Figure 3) illustrate the implementation differences for this practice across the Fellows.

Interviewees noted that CAUSE provided ample evidence to support the claim that using random call could create a more equitable classroom. As many of the Fellows in the program had been using this practice for a considerable period of time, they not only encouraged others to adopt this practice but also provided anecdotal information about how best to implement it (CAUSE educational value). These Fellows acted as mentors to instructors who were newer to using this and other practices (CAUSE social value). Three interviewees specifically noted they do not use random call in their classrooms. Two of these instructors explained that it was because they felt it might create anxiety for students (respect for students). In an effort to find a way to use random call that minimizes students’ and instructors’ anxiety, CAUSE Fellows suggested using a variation of the practice: group random call. Group random call relies on students discussing in groups prior to the report-out phase of the activity and allows students to be called by group name rather than by an individual student’s name (Knight et al., 2016). More recently, a new method of random call, termed “warm calling”—in which students are given an opportunity to discuss the answer with students they are sitting near prior to being called on by the instructor—has been introduced as yet another option for instructors (Metzger & Via, 2022).

We have detailed an account below from a Fellow who first struggled to use random call, adapted it to serve their students better, and became an avid supporter of the practice within CAUSE and within their department.

At the start of their first quarter in CAUSE, Peyton was implementing evidence-based teaching practices, but they seldom used random call. When asked about this, Peyton said,

I can tell you when I first did random calling, it was a bit of a disaster . . . . The general fear [of the subject], I think, made it difficult to do random calling because they were nervous, to begin with . . . . So, when I first tried, I random called by their names, but I had plenty of students. I couldn’t remember who’s who. When I random called by name, they would just pretend that they [were] not there. I had a lot of ignored calls and it wasn’t working. So, I had to stop that quarter . . . . But then I tried to do different things [with] random calls. This time I had a list of seat numbers and I would just walk up to that seat number and then personally ask, “So, what did you discuss?” Then, in that case, they can’t pretend that they are not there. Since then, I’ve been using that method and it works beautifully. It’s great.

Numerous articles have documented the many barriers faculty face when attempting to transform their teaching from traditional lecture to teaching methods that create greater student engagement (Apkarian et al., 2021; Austin, 2011; Brownell & Tanner, 2012; Carbone et al., 2019; Denaro et al., 2022; Henderson & Dancy, 2007; Kim et al., 2019; Shadle et al., 2017). Our thematic analysis of interviews further supports the existence of these barriers for today’s instructors. The six CAUSE Fellows indicated that the context and constraints of the course they taught, as well as their prior experience with certain teaching practices, were influential in their decisions to adopt and implement new teaching practices. Though multiple barriers to change existed for the Fellows, previous research indicates instructors’ perceived support in the change process is more impactful than the perceived barriers (Bathgate et al., 2019; McConnell et al., 2020). In fact, our thematic analysis reinforces this conclusion, as the Fellows identified the social support and educational resources the program provided as key to the program being useful for them. We also found that the Fellows expressed a personal motivation to change and a high degree of respect for their students as capable and valued partners in the learning process. We therefore frame our discussion as an asset rather than a deficit model of faculty change. We will organize our discussion to align with our research questions.

Our thematic analysis revealed that these six CAUSE Fellows greatly valued the strong and broad social support offered by the program. As a systems approach for change (Austin, 2011; DeMarais et al., 2022) was a key component of our program, CAUSE annually recruited cohorts of two to three faculty from seven different STEM departments over the three years of the program. This larger community afforded Fellows the opportunity to meet faculty outside their department and hear how other instructors had successfully implemented evidence-based teaching practices in their STEM classrooms. Multiple instructors explained they appreciated not having to “reinvent the wheel” of how to use these new teaching practices and could instead learn from more experienced CAUSE Fellows. Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory of learning states learning stems from social interaction, as knowledge is constructed by interactions with others, which in turn leads to internalization of that knowledge. The sociocultural theory of learning applies to any learner whether they are students in a class or faculty in professional development programs.

The Fellows appreciated the educational support the program offered in providing a curated and concise presentation of the primary literature on the impact of evidence-based teaching on student academic performance. As all CAUSE Fellows held doctorate degrees in STEM fields, they had been trained to make decisions based on empirical evidence and knew the value of results in peer-reviewed literature. Interestingly, Bouwma-Gearhart (2012) found that many faculty took part in faculty development efforts because they wanted to bring their teaching identities in better alignment with their research background. Therefore, it is possible that providing a rich list of citations for the value of evidence-based teaching may have supported these Fellows’ implementation of teaching practices.

However, our finding is in contrast to Andrews and Lemons’s (2015) results from their qualitative analysis of interviews of faculty engaged in adoption of a case study approach to teaching. Andrews and Lemons found that faculty’s personal experience with active learning was more influential than the provided empirical evidence for motivating change, which has been echoed in the literature (Jacobson & Cole, 2020). We interviewed a small sample of faculty specifically about the support that the CAUSE program provided. One of the hallmarks of the program was providing primary literature about evidence-based teaching. Therefore, it is possible that when Fellows were interviewed, they were likely to report that the evidence from the literature was helpful. It is also possible that these faculty were motivated by both empirical evidence and their own experiences with evidence-based teaching.

One of the Fellows, Peyton, explained that they were able to use evidence from the CAUSE meetings to support their argument for other instructors in their department to use random call. Peyton’s story supports the premise and findings from others, which suggest participants in faculty development programs can themselves become change agents within their departments and can even provide the impetus, support, and guidance for other departments on campus that are slower to implement evidence-based teaching practices (Andrews et al., 2016; Kezar, 2014; Lane et al., 2019; McConnell et al., 2020).

Providing objective feedback on classroom practices rather than instructor self-report has been noted to be key to many professional development programs in STEM departments (Brickman et al., 2016; Gormally et al., 2014; Hjelmstad et al., 2018; Manduca et al., 2017). CAUSE provided quantitative feedback on PORTAAL practices Fellows were using in their classrooms at the end of each term. The quarterly PORTAAL reports allowed faculty to monitor how their values for each PORTAAL practice compared with the range of values of their colleagues and provided opportunities for self-reflection and motivation for change. Two of the instructors interviewed stated this was one of the most beneficial parts of CAUSE.

In response to the numerous national calls to transform STEM teaching from traditional lecture to evidence-based practices, many groups have created and assessed faculty development programs to support this change. We designed CAUSE to operationalize current best practices resulting from these efforts. Below we summarize our results so that future professional development programs may take into consideration the value of providing the positive aspects of CAUSE and acknowledge the barriers that continue to exist for faculty as they begin the process of change.

Our thematic analysis of the interviews of six CAUSE Fellows contributes to the growing body of research designed to identify the factors that support faculty’s decisions to transform their teaching. Our analysis indicated that both extrinsic and intrinsic factors influenced their implementation of evidence-based teaching practices. The Fellows noted the social interaction with Fellows from their department and across STEM departments built a large and strong support network that provided encouragement for their sustained efforts and acknowledgment of their successes. Fellows valued that CAUSE promoted teaching methods that had empirical support for enhancing students’ academic performance and that CAUSE provided quantitative and objective feedback on their teaching methods over time. Many factors influenced Fellows’ implementation of evidence-based practices, including the course level and content, students’ comfort with the disciplinary material, Fellows’ experience using teaching methods, and Fellows’ personal motivation to change.

Underlying the discussions during the interviews, Fellows expressed a consistent and a strong sense of respect for their students. These Fellows were aware some students may be unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable with evidence-based teaching, so implementation would have to be tempered. Fellows were also aware they needed to balance the demands the new teaching strategies would place on the students’ time with the benefits they would provide but respected their students as willing and able learners. Given the increased awareness of the impact faculty’s mindset has on student learning (Canning et al., 2019) and recent evidence that inclusive teaching practices that emphasize treating students with dignity and respect may also close achievement gaps in STEM for students from marginalized backgrounds (Theobald et al., 2020), we were encouraged to find “respect for students” as a persistent theme in the interviews.

We found that change is a process that is complex and as varied as the individuals engaging in change. To be successful, faculty development programs need to provide the necessary social and educational support for change and recognize each individual brings their own teaching experience, course context, and personal motivations to the process of change.