Understanding Conditions for Teaching Innovation in Postsecondary Education: Development and Validation of the Survey of Climate for Instructional Improvement (SCII)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46328/ijte.46Keywords:
Systemic change, Teaching practices, Organizational climate, Collegiality, LeadershipAbstract
Adoption of evidence based instructional practices is not widespread in American institutions of higher education. This is due in part to reforms focusing on individual teaching practices rather than conditions for system reform. Since measurement of organizational conditions is critical for widespread change, we developed and validated the Survey of Climate for Instructional Improvement (SCII). SCII has 30 Likert-scale statements, 5 supplementary questions, and 9 demographic items. It is designed to measure five aspects of organizational climate in postsecondary settings: leadership, collegiality, resources, respect for teaching, and organizational support. The goal of this paper is to describe (a) our development process, (b) steps in validation, and (c) patterns in the data from 917 instructors at six institutions of higher education in the United States. Our results indicate that the instrument is reliable and has the potential to differentiate among institutions, disciplines, departments, and other demographic variables. Although the survey is interdisciplinary, we highlight notable organizational climate differences between STEM and non-STEM disciplines. We also identify organizational climate differences for cis-gender women and graduate student instructors, highlighting unique professional support needs for these groups. We expect our findings and the instrument to be useful for campus change leaders, faculty developers, higher education researchers, and discipline-based education researchers.References
Walter, E. M., Beach, A. L., Henderson, C., Williams, C. T., & Ceballos-Madrigal, I. (2021). Understanding conditions for teaching innovation in postsecondary education: Development and validation of the Survey of Climate for Instructional Improvement (SCII). International Journal of Technology in Education (IJTE), 4(2), 166-199. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijte.46
Downloads
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
License
Articles may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Authors alone are responsible for the contents of their articles. The journal owns the copyright of the articles. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of the research material.
The author(s) of a manuscript agree that if the manuscript is accepted for publication in the International Journal of Technology in Education (IJTE), the published article will be copyrighted using a Creative Commons “Attribution 4.0 International” license. This license allows others to freely copy, distribute, and display the copyrighted work, and derivative works based upon it, under certain specified conditions.
Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to include any images or artwork for which they do not hold copyright in their articles, or to adapt any such images or artwork for inclusion in their articles. The copyright holder must be made explicitly aware that the image(s) or artwork will be made freely available online as part of the article under a Creative Commons “Attribution 4.0 International” license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.