Apprenticeship of observation: Implications for the adoption of evidence-based instructional practices

This work explores the relationship between faculty descriptions of how they currently teach and how they were taught in similar courses during their undergraduate experience in order to understand how faculty choose to adopt evidence-based instructional practices in light of signature pedagogies in engineering education. Twenty-one one-on-one structured interviews were conducted with faculty members in a College of Engineering who teach courses in the first two years of the engineering curriculum. Interviews were analyzed using thematic and axial coding approaches to understand faculty's educational experiences as a student and how this relates to how they currently teach. Findings indicate that the current inclusion of evidence-based practices in undergraduate engineering courses positively relates to the adoption and persistence of usage by engineering educators. By this we can begin to understand the gestalt shifts that lead faculty away from signature pedagogies and towards more progressive and research-based approaches.