Perceived affordances and constraints regarding instructors' use of Peer Instruction: Implications for promoting instructional change

Abstract

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Preparing and Supporting University Physics Educators.] In order to promote sustained and impactful educational transformation, it is essential for change agents to understand more about faculty perceptions associated with either adopting or not adopting a research-based instructional strategy (RBIS). In this paper, we use interviews with 35 physics faculty to examine barriers and affordances to the use of the research-based instructional strategy of Peer Instruction. We found that the most common reasons faculty give for aligning their instruction with Peer Instruction is that it is not lecture and they have had positive experiences with Peer Instruction. The most common reasons faculty give for not using Peer Instruction are concerns about the time it will take, the loss of content coverage, and having had bad experiences with it. Additionally, we found the perceived barriers to be very different depending on whether the interviewee was a user of Peer Instruction or not, with nonusers being more concerned with time and users being more concerned with implementation difficulties. It is important for change agents to understand and address concerns faculty have about implementing research-based instructional strategies. Based on these results we offer four recommendations for those interested in promoting educational transformation toward research-based instructional strategies: (1) do not waste a lot of time criticizing lecture-based instruction and convincing faculty of the value of research-based strategies (they are already dissatisfied with lecture), (2) understand and address concerns faculty have about implementing active learning techniques, (3) focus on supporting and encouraging faculty experiences with RBIS, (4) address concerns faculty new to RBIS have about the time and energy needed to change.