2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Despite decades of research on active learning, many university STEM classes are taught using less effective transmission-based approaches. Students are commonly considered to be “resistant” to active learning, and faculty are thought to continue using passive teaching methods due to a combination of capitulation to student demands and lack of time or incentive for change. We seek to problematize this perspective by using third generation cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to analyze the activity systems of faculty and students in two engineering core courses. We find that all participants show evidence of two contradicting objects: meeting the demands of transactional schooling and achieving transformative learning. They respond to contradictions between these objects in varying ways, leading to different course structures and different learning outcomes. Based on an understanding of faculty and students as invested in transformative learning but grappling with complex demands, we encourage a shift in perspective from offering faculty strategies that they can use to combat student resistance to active learning to, instead, considering the ways in which the disciplinary community can provide support in shifting activity systems to resolve contradictions and achieve transformation.