Revert to Default: Insights on Transfer of Expertise in a Complex Competitive Workplace

We present findings from phase one of a study that investigates change over time in teaching methods at a large industrial innovator, where we examine the impact of an instructional development effort on participants' conceptions of teaching. Our research question seeks to explain why in many modern industrial complexes, teaching and training methods appear to be stuck in learning models, which predate the cognitive revolution with its techniques, strategies and philosophy grounded in the learning sciences. Participants comprised multiple cohorts of instructors drawn from a population of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) at a large aerospace company in the US whose task it was to teach in-house courses to fellow workers, new hires, and technicians. Participant demographics were characterized with respect to position, gender, age, work experience, and more so that the study could harvest a solid baseline that described teacher conceptions with respect to content and pedagogy. Participants attended a 1.5-day workshop on instructional design. The workshop emphasized (a) writing and using instructional objectives, (b) adopting active learning strategies, and (c) effective use of diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments. Pre and post assessment of participants’ conception of teaching was captured by a 20 question multiple-choice instrument that included demographic material (pre) and course evaluation (post) as appropriate. Item categories on the instrument were drawn from Bransford’s How People Learn (HPL) framework , a framework that is acknowledged as a practical way of organizing what we know about teaching and learning today. Participant responses were aggregated into four categories that derive from this framework (learner, knowledge, assessment, and community) and investigate how teaching methods, attitudes, and practices in the workplace compare to what learning sciences experts describe in similar learning environments . Subjects (N=85) were drawn from a pool of engineering domain knowledge experts in the aerospace industry who are either currently teaching or preparing to teach incumbent mid-career engineers, new hires and technicians. Results show shifts in participant attitudes related to each of the four components in varying capacity. In particular, findings indicate that SMEs were more apt after attending a day and a half in this course, to view learning in a more learner-centered way by (i) having students work in small groups, and (ii) by making visible preconceptions before teaching new information. At the same time, SMEs who received resources and information about assessment centered frameworks in learning, failed to connect with formative assessment as a valid teaching technique and ultimately increased the amount of summative assessments that they favored to administer. While these findings indicate that while most SMEs are intrigued by possibilities of pedagogical promise and, in fact, discuss their plans to affect change by incorporating inductive instructional strategies into their classroom events, we are anxious to know if, in phase II and Phase III of this study, they will be willing to abandon ‘tried and tested’ methods that they are familiar with because of having themselves experienced them in school. Future directions are suggested that elaborate on methods and practices to improve outcomes and advance greater change.