Over the past decade over 600M in funding has been devoted to bringing about reform in science education, but little is known about who is implementing reform, the extent of reform implementation and how educational contexts differentially impact reform innovations. This dissertation explores the results of the Multi-Initiative Dissemination Project (MID Project), a national curriculum reform program that was designed to propagate reform pedagogy among undergraduate chemistry faculty in faculty development workshops. We analyzed data from surveys, in-class observations and faculty interviews to explore the relationships between the participant faculty demographic features and their pedagogy and teaching philosophy before and following exposure to the workshops. We found interesting demographic characteristics that distinguish the participant faculty from the academic chemistry faculty responding to the ACS 2000 census. Also, our study uncovered relationships between the participants' demographic features and their conceptions of teaching and practices that may mediate the impact of pedagogical interventions such as curriculum reform workshops. This dissertation describes these relationships and their implications for policies supporting reform efforts
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USF/oai:scholarcommons.usf.edu:etd-3451 |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Creators | Barker, Beverly Dee |
| Publisher | Scholar Commons |
| Source Sets | University of South Flordia |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Graduate Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | default |
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