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Nudging Faculty Toward Interactive Teaching

April 2, 2012

Higher education faculty observe implicit and explicit norms for things like course content and instructional autonomy. But norms for interactive teaching are weak or non-existent in many cases. A new study by Matthew Hora and Craig Anderson points to ways that higher education policymakers can encourage strong normative systems for interactive teaching. Because such normative systems comprise many indicators and phenomena, attempts to create strong norms would require targeting a variety of focal points as opposed to a single one (e.g., group beliefs). Change agents should align their educational reforms with the multi-faceted social realities of faculty members as they experience them in their local settings. Individual colleges and universities can conduct cultural audits to elicit information about a variety of cultural forms such as artifacts, symbols, recurrent practices, and tacit beliefs. Both ‘‘positive’’ and ‘‘negative’’ normative expectations active within a group may provide a foundation upon which to build and develop new norms. More about Hora’s research is available here.