Constructing Classroom Culture: A Framework for Analysis in the Context of Gateway Chemistry Courses

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Case Study Approaches to Understanding Higher Education Culture

Abstract

While researchers, educators, and policymakers call for transforming the culture of teaching and learning in undergraduate STEM courses, the literature lacks a compelling framework for investigating how instructors and students experience this culture in consequential ways. In this paper we build a field-theoretic framework for analyzing classroom culture within the context of a chemistry department at a large research university. Using a case study design, we conducted faculty interviews, student focus groups, and classroom observations in three gateway chemistry courses. Causal coding and instructional network analyses reveal the contradictory ways in which classroom culture is constructed and experienced by instructors and students. The results provide insights into the challenges and opportunities available to pedagogical innovation movements in higher education.

Authors

• Joseph J. Ferrare, University of Kentucky

• Ross Benbow, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Erika Vivyan, University of Wisconsin - Madison