Activating Teaching-Focused Faculty for Systemic Change in Gateway Math Courses

What if persistently high DFW rates in gateway math courses aren’t due to a lack of innovation, insight, or data but due to hurdles to widely implementing the good ideas already out there? A new initiative is working on the premise that educators know enough to remove most of the hurdles to impactful math education and that a critical mass of people is in place to do it — particularly the teaching-focused faculty at research universities whose ranks have grown dramatically over the last two decades.

Dave Kung is the Executive Director of TPSE Math, a nonprofit devoted to constructive change in post-secondary math education. Their newest initiative, in collaboration with the Association of Public & Land-grant Universities, is Project EMBER (Eliminating Math Barriers Through Evidence-Based Reforms), which is building a network of educators who can spread evidence-based reforms far and wide enough to enable systemic change. The goal of Project EMBER is to develop introductory math courses that have low DFW rates, align with student interests, have equitable access and outcomes, and that catalyze success for degree completion for STEM majors and non-majors.

“Every Provost we talk to looks for high DFW rates and courses, and math is usually more than half of the ten worst ones,” Kung says. “We know what would work to fix that. It’s evidence-based teaching practices. The problem is one of opportunity to implement these innovations at scale.”

A key part of the Project EMBER theory of change, Kung explains, is “that the rise of teaching-focused faculty at research schools allows us to do things that we couldn’t have done before.”

He is referring to faculty in positions — particularly at R1 or research-focused institutions — with titles like Professor of Practice or Professor of Teaching. They are often on a modified tenure track or on renewable contracts and have a different mix of teaching and research responsibilities from their traditional research colleagues.

Data on this emerging category of faculty is limited, but Project EMBER says, for example, that in recent decades teaching-focused faculty (TFF) have gone from teaching around 20 percent of Calculus II courses to about 60 percent at R1 universities.

TFF are often coordinating gateway courses and managing the large numbers of adjuncts, graduate students, and postdocs who teach them.

Critically, TFF are generally more available for any reform effort than traditional tenure-track research faculty, as institutional incentives historically don’t align with the scholarship of teaching and learning in order to improve student outcomes in gateway courses.

All of that, says Kung, adds up to a “new lever” for implementing evidence-based teaching practices that didn’t exist before.

Tapping into the pipeline

Another part of Project EMBER’s theory of change is that R1s hold significant influence in shaping policies and practices across higher education and thus can support systemic change.

For example, 250 schools that are members of the Association of Public & Land-grant Universities teach half of all four-year students in the country. The students who go through R1 math departments as undergraduates and graduate students teach everywhere — high school, community colleges, public regionals, and private colleges and universities, both large and small.

“Almost all faculty get their start teaching at these research schools,” Kung says. “If we can change what introductory math looks like there, we change the pipeline of faculty, and we change the culture of mathematics. Working at research schools is a path to improving outcomes for all students.”

A network of knowledge sharing

One core activity of Project EMBER is assembling cross-functional teams at individual universities that include the TFF and students, along with the relevant departmental and college leadership and other professional staff who can support putting evidence-based teaching practices into place.

The reforms these teams work on could cover developmental education, course coordination, tech-enabled courseware, math pathways alignment, and active pedagogy. Any given innovation or initiative will vary by whether it needs to happen at the level of the section, course, department, or institution. “That is partly why you need the cross-functional and vertical team,” Kung explains.

“The teaching-focused faculty are the new lever, but we know we need the attention of deans and provosts and vice presidents for undergraduate learning and so on.”

Credit: Presentation deck for Project EMBER at TPSE Math

The second core activity is creating a network of those teams to exchange ideas and share resources. In his introductory presentation on Project EMBER, Kung uses an illustration showing the healthy network of connections between R1 universities regarding research in comparison to many fewer connections between the same institutions regarding teaching.

“When it comes to teaching, small liberal arts colleges are connected with one another, but the R1s are not, and that’s a problem if you want change,” he says. “What we really need is teams not at one institution but at institutions all around the country. Connecting people spurs innovation.”

Building the community

In the meantime, Project EMBER nurtures evidence-based innovations throughout the growing network. They provide webinars, workshops, and self-assessment tools for departments, and they host a channel on Zulip — an open-source messaging software similar to Slack or Microsoft Teams — where community members discuss their work. (Teaching-focused math faculty are invited to join the Zulip community here.)

Many practices and activities from individual faculty in the growing Zulip community can be seen in the examples library of Transform Learning, a resource hub on digital learning developed by intentional futures and managed by Every Learner Everywhere.

For example, a concern that bubbled up in the Zulip community recently was about effective training for undergraduate assistants. So Project EMBER found experts on that subject, organized a webinar, and is hosting follow-up discussions.

As the network and supporting activities mature, Kung sees the teams from individual institutions coalescing into affinity groups around the evidence-based practices most relevant for them. Whatever the subject, an overarching priority for Kung is that TFF begin to see themselves as change agents. Partly that may result organically from working with peers, and partly it may result from intentional professional development Project EMBER is planning.

“The teaching-focused faculty we’re meeting are enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and hardworking,” Kung says.

“If we connect them with each other and engineer support from their departments, colleges, and institutional leaders, they will do amazing things. That can’t happen soon enough. Every semester we wait, poor mathematics experiences are keeping thousands of students from reaching their potential.”