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Table 2 Model components

From: Supporting improvements to undergraduate STEM instruction: an emerging model for understanding instructional change teams

Group/category/sub-category

Brief description of the category or sub-category

Inputs

 

Nature of the task

 

Team origin story

How the team formed.

Prescribed task

Whether or how the team’s task is prescribed (who chooses the task).

Who participates

 

Team composition

Characteristics of team members, e.g., their expertise, interests, or authority.

Team boundaries

Extent to which team membership is well defined.

Process constraints

 

Prescribed process

Whether or how the team’s process is prescribed by formal leaders, typically people outside the team.

Formalized roles

Whether or how team members’ roles are clearly defined near the start of their work together.

External engagement

 

Opportunities to gather information

How team members gain useful information or expertise.

Opportunities to share information

How team members share their work with others.

Access to resources

 

Administrator support

Whether or how administrators try to help the team.

Rewards

How team members are rewarded for the work. Rewards can be tangible and/or symbolic.

Mediators

 

Team processes

How team members coordinate their work together.

Emergent states

What team members think and feel related to their work together.

Outcomes

 

Sustainability of changes

The sustainability of the instructional changes.

Quality of changes

The quality of instructional changes relative to the team’s goals.

Collaboration changes

Changes in the capacity of team members to work together in the future.

Individual changes

Changes in individual team members’ knowledge, skills, affect, or well-being.

  1. Definitions for the categories (italic text) in our model. The first five categories are broken down into two sub-categories (regular text) each. These are the team inputs identified through our analysis. The two categories in the mediator group are adopted from (Marks et al. 2001) and align with our empirical findings. Three of the four categories in the outcome group (quality, ability to work together, individual outcomes) are based on Wageman & Hackman (Wageman et al. 2005)’s dimensions of team outcomes. We also include sustainability as an outcome based on our empirical observations and the literature on organization change within and outside of higher education. We have not attempted to empirically explore mediators and outcomes in depth, but include them as important aspects of the model and placeholders for future research. See also Fig. 1 and the “Results” section of the main text