Curriculum Development Instruments

Teacher/Faculty Interviews

Instrument 2: Interview Protocol: Issues Surrounding Teaching Quantitative Material and Reasoning

Project: Anonymous 3

Funding Source: NSF: Course and Curriculum Development (DUE)

Purpose: To assess issues surrounding teaching quantitative material and reasoning

Administered To: Non-participating mathematics faculty

Topics Covered:

• Attitudes & Beliefs (Teacher/Faculty): profession, professional activities, reform, student understanding, technology
• Course Evaluation: areas for program improvement
• Impact on Outcomes: collaboration, instructional practices
• Implementation Activities: recruitment
• Institutional Context: faculty support, mandates
• Instructional Practices: activities, assessment, collaboration, techniques, technology
• Limitations & Barriers: professional involvement
• Perceptions (Teacher/Faculty): impact, mentoring/support, student performance
• Background Characteristics & Activities (Teacher/Faculty): current practice, experience

Format/Length: 33 open-ended questions, plus 3 demographic questions

Biography:

Department

Years teaching

Courses taught

I.  Pedagogy

A.  Three educational issues

1. There has been much debate recently about the role of what is often glossed as "technology" in the classroom.
   • How do you feel calculators, computers, and the Internet, among others, should be employed in the classroom?
   • How have you used them?

2. There's also been a lot of talk about teaching that is student-centered and problem-oriented. How do you evaluate the usefulness of these approaches for your teaching?
   Have you employed them yourself?

   open-ended (ill-structured) problems

   group work

   hands-on activities

3. What about collaborative, interdisciplinary teaching?
   • Have you taught with someone from another field recently?
     If yes, could you describe that experience?
     

     topic

     structure of collaboration

     satisfactions, frustrations

     impact on students

   • If not, is there any particular reason why not?
   • What do you see as the major obstacles to interdisciplinary teaching at the College?

B.  Your own teaching

1. In your view, what is the most effective way to teach college students the kind of mathematics and/or quantitative reasoning that you need to teach them? [Put another way, how do you think your students learn math best?]
   • Is it the same for all kinds of math, at all levels?
   • Is it the same for all students?
2. Do you teach this way? If not, how do you teach, and why?
   • Do your students arrive with the math abilities they need for you to teach as you would like?
   • If not, where do they fall short?
3. What kind and level of quantitative abilities should majors in your department have when they graduate?
   • Do most graduates achieve this?
   • If not, does their failure to achieve this have implications for their competence in the field overall? I.e., can you be a good _______ and still not be able to do the math part?
   • What would you recommend to ensure that your majors leave with the math competence they need?

II.  Institution

1. Rating aspects of their job in the same survey, 73.8% of faculty at 4-year colleges felt their "opportunities to develop new ideas" was "very satisfactory or satisfactory." An almost identical number—71.8%—rank their job security in the same way. One might suspect that the missing quarter are the same in both cases—untenured junior faculty. A junior faculty member here told me that he felt these were the years he should be experimenting with new teaching strategies, but that older faculty warned him to be cautious, both to avoid the risk of failure and the low teaching evaluations it might bring and to devote more time to publications. With this in mind, let me ask you...
   • Do you feel that trying out new pedagogy actually IS risky? If so, what are the dangers one courts?
   • What kind of support does the College give to those who want to improve their teaching? How about the department?
   • What advice would you give a junior faculty member about how to apportion his or her efforts among teaching, research, and service?

2. The demands placed upon faculty are numerous and sometimes seem to be at odds with one another. Let me give you some figures from the most recent Chronicle of Higher Education faculty survey (9/97) and ask you to comment on them in light of your experience. 99.6% of full-time faculty at private 4-year colleges considered it "essential or very important" to "be a good teacher." (Incidentally, only 52.1% gave the same weight to "engaging in research.") But only 20.1% of those same faculty felt that at their institution "faculty are rewarded for good teaching."
   • How do you understand the College's position on the value of good teaching?
   • What about your department?
   • Do you think the college community agrees about what constitutes good teaching of mathematically grounded material—or their commitment to it? If there is variation, where are the lines: between faculty and administration, between different divisions, between older and younger faculty, between men and women faculty?

III.  Project awareness

1. Apart from my activities in approaching you, are you familiar with the project?
   When did you first hear about it?
   What can you tell me about its
   
   • History
   • Goals
   • Activities
   • Personnel

2. Were you approached to participate in the project, or did you consider volunteering for participation?
   
   If yes, why did you decide not to participate?

3. What kind of impact do you think the project is having on the College?
   • Do you think it is making a difference in the way students are taught?
   • Do you think the project's emphasis on collaborative, interdisciplinary teaching is altering patterns of faculty interaction?

***Is there anything else about math teaching and learning that you'd like to add?