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This chapter examines the use of virtual communities of practice to group coach and mentor educators and facilitate engaging critical consciousness. A Group Coaching and Mentoring framework became the platform in which the core elements of coaching, mentoring, metacognition, and self-regulated learning strategies were employed. These core elements were applied within virtual communities of practice to manifest self-awareness, reflective thinking, planning for action, and accountability, each of which is vital to the development of critical consciousness. Research shows that fostering critical consciousness creates spaces to address learning equity and gaps in educational achievement. Therefore, this chapter serves as a guide for educational leaders to effectively administer group coaching to raise an educator’s higher-order thinking, plan, problem solve, and co-create. The implementation of this design resulted in increased motivation and willingness among educators to apply new skills and foster new teaching experiences that shaped learning outcomes for their students.

The study's purpose was to examine the faculty-driven organization's design and development that supports faculty research needs, track the emergence of the community of practice (CoP) and provide greater insight into continued organizational design iterations.

In this longitudinal design case study, the authors employed different methods to collect and analyze archival, quantitative and qualitative data to capture the phenomenon's complexity.

The findings challenge the assumption that only formal organizational structures and top-down management approaches stimulate research and build research capacity in universities and propose a new sustainable and agile informal organizational structure and strategies to respond to faculty members' various research needs.

Future research is needed to investigate the tension between the individual researchers' and organizational needs, formal and informal organizational structures in universities, and the creation of a culture that would stimulate research.

Some of the recommended strategies and activities already have been implemented by the Research Consortium Committee (RCC), and faculty engagement in the RCC initiatives has increased. The practical implications are not limited to a College of Education (COE) context. The findings and the developed strategies could apply to many universities and colleges that desire to support their researchers. The research development officers, university administration and policymakers can consider the results of the present study to develop a comprehensive framework for research capacity and infrastructure building from not only organizational but individual perspectives.

This study provides one of the rare empirical investigations of the design, development and evolution of researchers' needs-driven informal organization in a higher education (HE) setting.

This study aims to understand the extent to which a faculty development program that includes a week-long course design experience followed by sustained support changes new faculty's perceptions, beliefs and teaching practices. The authors employed the teacher professional knowledge and skill (TPK&S) framework and characteristics of effective educational development interventions to drive the program development, implementation and assessment.

This study utilized a mixed methods approach. Data sources include pre-/mid-/post-program responses to a validated survey, pre-/post-program course syllabi analyzed using a validated rubric and pre-/post-classroom observations collected using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) instrument.

Findings indicate transformative effects for participants' beliefs about their teaching and changes to their instructional practices. Significant and practical effects were observed across different portions of the program for increases in participants' self-efficacy, endorsement of a conceptual change approach toward teaching and perceptions of institutional support. Participants produced more learning-focused syllabi and many moved toward more student-centered instructional approaches in their teaching practices.

Due to the voluntary nature of the new faculty development program, this study may have been limited by participant self-selection bias and differential sample sizes for the study's individual measures. Future research should consider designs which maximize faculty participation in measurement across all data sources.

This study addresses shortcomings in prior studies which utilized limited data sources to measure intervention impact and answers the call for more rigorous research to obtain a more complete picture of instructional development in higher education.

This chapter centers on practices of Review Ethics Board (REBs) as they may impact academic freedom for faculty members acting as participants in research. A case example is provided, which highlights the authors’ experience applying for ethics clearance to conduct a qualitative research study. While the study was classified as minimal risk and received ethics clearance from the researchers’ host institution, additional research ethics applications were required from the higher education settings identified, before being able to recruit participants. In addition to pressing timelines, extra workload and the coordination of different requirements for each institution, not all REBs permitted faculty members the option to reveal their identity and their beliefs on pedagogical practices. This particular experience with the ethics review process elicited questions centering on research ethics committees’ practices in terms of (a) providing opportunities for faculty members, as participants in research, to freely share information about their beliefs and teaching practices as well as (b) infringing on faculty members’ autonomy and rights to intellectually express, share and take ownership of their personal beliefs and pedagogical approaches to teaching in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to: (1) explore existing practices of STEM faculty at a private Lebanese university and (2) assess the extent of implementation of active learning among faculty members of selected STEM departments.

The Working Group on “Integrating Modern Scientific teaching methodologies in STEM” (IM-STEM) at a tertiary university in Lebanon advocates for novel research-based methods to enhance STEM education. This pilot study investigated, using a modified version of the Wieman and Gilbert “Teaching Practices Inventory”, the current teaching methods used by faculty members in selected STEM departments.

Remarkably, most respondents admit a willingness to incorporate new teaching methods. Main findings indicate that traditional teaching via didactic lecturing remains prevalent in the STEM classrooms at the tertiary academic institution in Lebanon despite sporadic individual efforts by faculty members to utilize unconventional methods and active learning.

One major limitation that influenced the efficiency of this study is the small number of respondents (71 faculty members). More in-depth data collection combining quantitative and qualitative data should be done in future studies.

Gaining insight into the actual methods used in STEM fields in various departments can help the university management to better understand the key importance of educational reform.

The main value of this paper is to serve as a prelude for educational reform at a tertiary academic institution.

This chapter highlights the creation of a STEM Center of Excellence for Active Learning (SCEAL) at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. The overarching goal of the STEM Center is to transform pedagogy and institutional teaching and learning in order to significantly increase the production of high-achieving students who will pursue careers and increase diversity in the STEM workforce. Some of the STEM Center’s efforts to reach its goals included supporting active learning classroom and course redesign efforts along with providing professional development workshops and opportunities to garner funding to cultivate student success projects through the development of an Innovation Ventures Fund. Outcomes from this Center have led to several publications and external grant funding awards to continue implementation, assessment, and refinement of active learning innovations and interventions for STEM student success for years to come.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a unique case of a librarian–engineering faculty partnership grounded in a faculty development National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. Authors will describe processes, lessons learned, challenges and opportunities resulting from designing, implementing and evaluating a massive open online course (MOOC) focused on teaching faculty how to flip classes.

This case study presents a reflective review of the process of two unlikely collaborators who work together, write a grant, design faculty development training and develop and evaluate a MOOC. Decisions made, perspectives and lessons learned will be discussed.

The evolution of an NSF grant partnership involving an engineering faculty and librarian is presented. Larger issues, such as proactivity of librarians, non-traditional librarian roles and librarian versus academic identity, are raised and discussed.

This case study presents a unique type of librarian–faculty partnership, one where a librarian is a Co-PI on an NSF grant. Collaborator reflections on lessons learned, challenges and implications could be applicable to other digital/technology projects, online professional development initiatives and course design projects.

This paper explores who among the AACSB categorization of academics conducts the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research within business schools and how AACSB-accredited business schools capture SoTL research as part of their portfolio of intellectual contributions.

This study adopts a qualitative-method research design by collecting primary data through surveys, semi-structured interviews and secondary data in policy documents focused on AACSB-accredited business schools in Canada and the United States.

The findings establish that scholarly and practice academics who possess rigorously acquired research skills due to their terminal degrees are most likely to conduct SoTL research. The results also reveal an even split among respondents regarding whether their AACSB-accredited business school captures SoTL with their journal ranking frameworks.

Based on the findings, two recommendations are offered to foster more SoTL research at AACSB-accredited schools. First, higher education leaders (e.g. business school deans) can further inculcate a culture of SoTL research at the department and institutional levels by creating communities of practice (CoPs). Second, AACSB-accredited business schools could adopt more inclusive journal ranking frameworks to capture better and incentivize SoTL research.

This is the first known study to explore how AACSB Standards 3 and 8 are implemented and operationalized regarding SoTL research. Understanding how these standards are adopted and implemented could help institutional leaders, standard setters and administrators better facilitate SoTL research.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate the scholar–practitioner research development scale (SPRDS), an instrument to assess research competencies of students enrolled in professional doctoral programs.

In this instrument development study, an expert panel established the content valid. A factor analysis and internal consistency analysis was used to examine the validity and reliability of the instrument.

An expert panel deemed the scale as content valid. Results of a factor analysis and internal consistency analysis demonstrated that the scale is both valid and reliable, consisting of five subscales.

The current study provides evidence that the scholar–SPRDS is a valid and reliable instrument to assess research characteristics professional doctorate students’ research competencies, which can be used to extend research on the development of doctoral students in professional doctorate programs.

The instrument can be a useful tool to assess and inform the faculty and administrators about their students, the curriculum and program resources.

Equipped with an instrument such as this, faculty and administrators are better armed to assess students’ growth thought out the program, and, in turn, design and deliver research curriculum and mentorship that assists students in developing as scholar–practitioners, which may ultimately lead to success in the program and beyond, impacting the society.

There is not a formal or standardized scale to evaluate if professional doctoral students are progressing and developing as practitioner-scholars through their professional doctoral programs. There is not a standardized or universally adopted assessment to determine if professional doctoral programs are meeting the goals and objectives they have set forth. Thus, the aim of this study was to develop and to determine the validity and reliability of a scale to measure a scholar–practitioner’s research competencies in a professional doctoral program.