2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This WIP study stems from a larger project focused on the propagation of educational technology in diverse instructional settings. During that study 24 faculty from 9 institutions were interviewed several times about a range of aspects of their instruction. We identified how the instructor’s interactions with the educational tool interacted uniquely with their instructional ecosystems in ways that we termed their trajectory of practice. The study reported here extends that work by exploring ways to conceptualize how instructors frame their teaching. For this case study, we contrast two instructor’s framings in an attempt to establish the viability of applying this analytical lens to the whole data set.

One instructor framed their activity as working to get students to solve the specific types of challenging problems in their mechanics course, viewing that as paramount to succeeding in future courses in the curriculum as well as on a common final exam. The other instructor framed practice more expansively, stating that students were “only going to apply a small fraction of the technical content that [they] learned as an undergrad [in professional practice],” but would need the ways of thinking that these problems afforded. Hence, rather than focusing on the future courses in the curriculum, their stated goal was to develop successful engineers. This study contributes theoretical understanding to approaching professional learning by thinking not only about where someone is on their trajectory of practice but also considering how they are framing their practice and what resources they are activating.