Facilitating change in undergraduate STEM: A multidisciplinary, multimethod metasynthesis mapping a decade of growth

Over the past decade, substantial research has focused on improving undergraduate STEM instruction. Yet, much less attention has been paid to how change is studied, specifically, which theories of change are used and how they inform change strategies. A prior NSF-funded project (Henderson et al., 2011) provided a foundational synthesis of this literature, identifying four broad categories of change strategies that have since shaped the field. Building on that work, we conducted an extensive multidisciplinary, multimethod metasynthesis to examine how research on instructional change in undergraduate STEM has evolved since 2011. From over 9,000 potentially relevant publications identified through systematic searches, 414 met our initial inclusion criteria. Using qualitative coding based on and extending the prior framework, we analyzed the change strategies, change agents, targets of change, and disciplinary patterns represented in this body of work. This presentation will share emerging trends and insights from this updated synthesis, highlighting how the study and practice of change in undergraduate STEM have advanced over the past decade.