03: Catalyzing Action Team (CAT)

DeLTA Catalyzing Action Team (CAT)

Developed as an NSF-DeLTA funded project, Catalyzing Action Team (CAT) learning communities consist of faculty leaders from participating departments who wish to devote time learning about robust and equitable teaching evaluation, building new departmental evaluation practices, and piloting and refining these practices. Members collaborate in a Learn-Build-Pilot sequence, learning first and then building and piloting new departmental teaching evaluation practices based on the Three-Voice Framework. This curriculum draws heavily on social cognition and cultural change perspectives and the readiness for change framework. CAT members are empowered and supported by their respective department chairs in the pursuit of teaching evaluation reform and work in tandem with the Leadership Action Team (LAT). CAT members attend bi-weekly meetings during one academic year facilitated by DeLTA and are compensated with summer salary.

Department chairs identify 1-2 faculty members for the CAT who are interested, able to commit the necessary time for this work, and well positioned to advocate for change. Chairs give CAT members power and support to share their work with their department and pilot new practices. Chairs also commit to endorsing these practices so that they become institutionalized for the full department. The CAT members from across departments form a single team that collaborates to take action. Though each CAT member spearheads practices for their own department, the team provides an essential collaborative environment for sharing ideas across departments and disciplines, troubleshooting, and fostering the resilience needed for persisting in departmental change. Ideally, members meet bi-weekly over 1 year, with 1-2 facilitators from the change agent team.

Learn - Build - Pilot

DeLTA uses the Learn-Build-Pilot sequence to guide CAT members through the process of reforming teaching evaluation within their respective departments. The CAT commences in the fall semester, with four bi-weekly meetings in the Learn phase. Then, in the spring semester the CAT collaborates with their department chairs to engage in the Build phase together, which lasts through the summer. The Build phase consists of two 1-on-1 meetings between chairs and CAT members of a department. The Pilot phase occurs in the second fall semester and includes feedback from department members. CAT members are expected to do the following during their academic year of action:

• Attend a summer meeting with their department chair
• Attend CAT meetings every other week
• Attend joint monthly meetings with LAT members
• Develop, enact, and share new teaching evaluation processes and tools in their department
• Share progress with colleagues in similar roles in other departments
• Advocate within their department
• Participate in ongoing DeLTA research & evaluation
• Continue the work in year 2 with sufficient progress in year 1

Time progresses from bottom (Learn) to top (Pilot) and left to right.

Learn

This stage is critical because STEM faculty have typically had few opportunities to learn about or experience evidence-based, improvement-oriented, and equity-centered teaching evaluation practices. Our preliminary work has revealed the productive ideas (e.g., teaching evaluation is most important for helping faculty improve their teaching) and the unproductive ones (e.g., peer evaluation is too time-consuming and biased) that faculty hold regarding teaching evaluation and departmental change. As a result, we are prepared to elicit and respond to these ideas using questions and activities that effectively foster learning. We will provide scaffolded learning opportunities that build CAT members’ expertise about teaching evaluation and leading change, drawing on the readiness for change framework. We will create a sense of discrepancy by introducing CAT members to data about the shortcomings of current practices and probing them to reflect on current departmental practices. This will involve the GATEs (Krishnan et al., 2022), which can help faculty see problems in their current approaches (i.e., discrepancy), and provide feasible and effective solutions to identified problems (i.e., appropriateness & valence). We will foster confidence in their capability to change departmental practices (i.e., efficacy) by providing leadership training about fostering faculty buy-in and navigating resistance. For example, we will introduce the readiness for change framework as a guide for conveying messages to faculty that foster buy-in (e.g., Armenakis & Harris, 2002). We will increase a sense of administrative support for reforms by keeping LAT and CAT members informed about relevant university-level policies.

Build

After reflecting on their current practices and learning about more robust and equitable practices, the next step is building new departmental practices. We support CAT members in adapting existing forms and processes to fit the needs of their department. For example, there are numerous peer observation forms and instructor self-reflection templates that have already been refined by other departments, both within the DeLTA project and beyond. We have previously curated a collection of forms and processes for student, peer, and self voice, as a supplemental material in Krishnan et al. (2022) and in the UGA teaching evaluation website that we built.

Alongside building teaching evaluation practices, we also support LAT and CAT members to plan how they will build readiness for teaching evaluation reform in their department. We facilitate discussions that prompt LAT and CAT members to identify the various problems that can be addressed by new teaching evaluation practices. Leaders will be more successful at fostering readiness for change if they can identify what others see as important problems and speak to how the change can help address those problems (Armenakis & Harris, 2002). For example, while LAT or CAT members may see a need to better recognize good teaching in the department, other faculty may be more concerned about the importance of mentoring junior faculty. These faculty may be open to formative teaching evaluation that helps faculty improve their teaching.

Pilot

The last phase in the DeLTA model is piloting new departmental teaching evaluation practices. This stage allows for refining new practices and fostering readiness for change among departmental faculty. The LAT member will sanction the pilot and help roll out new practices in a way that recruits supporters and minimizes resistance. CAT members will lead the pilot and revise the practices based on their experiences and feedback from colleagues. Another component of the pilot phase may be faculty meetings about teaching evaluation, which the DeLTA team can support at the request of CAT and LAT members. These meetings may aim to raise awareness, facilitate consensus-building about new practices, or foster skill building (e.g., skills for systematic self-reflection, providing high-quality feedback, conducting peer observation). The DeLTA team will collaborate with CAT and LAT members to determine what support they need to foster buy-in for new practices and to support faculty member’s productive engagement with new practices. CAT meetings in this phase respond to members’ needs and include troubleshooting, returning to topics from the learning phase as needed, providing feedback, interpreting feedback from colleagues about the pilot, and making plans for next steps.