Beyond Stipends and Release Time: Providing Incentives to STEM Faculty
Westat's RETA, The Effect of STEM Faculty Engagement in MSP-A Longitudinal Perspective, consists of two major components: multiyear case studies of eight MSP projects from three cohorts, and an analysis of data collected from the Management Information System (MIS) on all MSP partnership projects.
The eight case study projects were selected based on a review of proposals for a relatively high level of STEM faculty participation in the projects. Examples of high level of STEM faculty participation are often indicated by an important role envisioned by the project for the STEM faculty; the types and levels of STEM faculty engagement proposed; and the number of faculty who had already signed up as participants.
For the case study projects, we conducted annual multiple-day site visits involving both interviews and observations. The structured interviews were with project leadership, STEM faculty members, department chairs, project evaluators, preservice students, teacher leaders, inservice teachers, principals and district content specialists. The observations were of STEM faculty during delivery of preservice instruction and during delivery of inservice professional development. We also observed K-12 teachers with whom STEM faculty have worked. Site visit data primarily serve a descriptive function, providing researchers with a thorough understanding of STEM faculty involvement and its potential impacts in each project as well as across projects. Essentially, there are two layers of triangulation. The first layer is within each project, whereby evidence is triangulated from interviews, observations, and document reviews. The second layer occurs across projects, whereby evidence is compared and contrasted in the context of each project.
We also analyze data from MSP MIS, which includes all the MSP projects, to provide a larger context for interpreting our case study data. The MIS data provides information from projects with regard to faculty profiles, extent of engagement, and types of engagement. We specifically examined data from three annual MIS modules. These modules were the IHE participant survey, the IHE institution survey, and the K-12 district survey.
