Faculty Reflections of Pedagogical Transformation in Active Learning Classrooms

Increasingly, Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) are being designed and built by higher education institutions to support instructors in adopting and implementing active learning pedagogies. In this study, we explore how instructors perceive changes in their teaching after teaching in ALCs. Our study focuses on the perceptions of faculty members who have completed a year-long professional development around teaching in ALCs. We conduct place-based interviews with nine such faculty members to examine their perceptions of their changing pedagogies of specific ALCs. Using thematic analysis, we categorized faculty’s perceptions of the affordances of ALCs for their teaching and student learning into three major themes: (1) ALCs afford visibility and instructor presence, (2) ALCs afford better feedback and apprenticeship, and (3) ALCs afford intimate conversations and student dialogue. Finally, we draw on data from the interviews to explicate each theme in turn before discussing commonalities and tensions among the themes. These three themes present an entry point for professional development designers, instructors, and other institutional stakeholders to understand how instructors orient active learning pedagogues to learning spaces.