A major focus of innovation in higher education today is to improve faculty teaching, especially their focus on students' career readiness and acquisition of workplace-relevant communication and teamwork competencies (i.e., transferable skills). Some contend that such instruction is best achieved through hiring faculty with prior work experience in industry, where the "culture" is preferable to academia where practical skills and career guidance are undervalued. However, little research exists on the topic and in this study we draw on person-centered views of culture to conceptualize industry experience as a form of cultural knowledge (i.e., cultural scripts) that can travel with a person (or not) over time and space. Using a mixed methods design where we gathered survey (n = 1,140) and interview (n = 89) data from STEMM faculty, we used thematic and HLM techniques to explore the relationships among industry experience, various situational factors, and transferable skills instruction. Results show that while most had industry experience (76.2%), transferable skills are rarely emphasized, a variety of individual (e.g., race) and institutional (e.g., discipline) factors are associated with transferable skills instruction, and that industry experience provides both generalized and specific cultural scripts for career- and skills-oriented teaching. We conclude that instead of promoting skills-focused instructional innovations via hiring policies that assume the value of one institutional culture over another, it is more useful and respectful (to faculty) to teach industry-based cultural knowledge via faculty development programming in a way similar to work-integrated learning (WIL) and communication in the disciplines (CID) initiatives.

In the field of network administration and programming, mastery of technical skills as well as non-technical or soft skills, such as teamwork, problem-solving, self-regulated learning, and communication, are increasingly emphasized both in practice and research. While little research exists concerning the instructional practices of such skills within community colleges, even less is known about community college instructors' conceptions of these crucial 21st century skills. This paper reports a qualitative, exploratory study examining how community college instructors defined and taught communication and teamwork competencies in their computer technology classrooms. The data was collected from multiple data sources - instructor interviews, observations of classroom teaching, and student focus group discussions about their learning. Main findings include the influence of instructor backgrounds on their teaching practices, the situational nature of how instructors defined and conceptualized communication and teamwork skills, and the prominent use of teacher-centered practices in the teaching of communication and teamwork skills. We conclude that while faculty participants in this study considered teamwork and communication skills to be important, their classroom teaching was insufficiently student-centered to truly cultivate these skills. Thus, we argue that more training, resources, and support structures are needed for community college instructors in order to better cultivate the communication and teamwork skills of their students. This paper adds empirical evidence to the national conversations on the critical issues of skills, student employment, and pedagogy, and also utilizes a triangulating approach to better document faculty teaching practices.

Over the past 35 years, a range of ‘new’ policy actors and networks has emerged from the private sector under the rationale of efficient, free-market alternatives to traditional public policymakers. Under a critical policy studies framework, this paper uses discourse analysis and interviews with key stakeholders to examine how one regional workforce development initiative–the UpSkill Houston initiative–promotes a business-driven vision of education reform. We find that their programmatic narratives promote this vision through a focus on closing the ‘skills gap’ and tailoring education to best meet the labor needs of regional industries. We further note that UpSkill Houston espouses a skills-based vision of a worker pipeline directly from the education sector into high-growth regional industries. We situate UpSkill Houston’s programmatic narrative within an expanding number of private regional workforce development initiatives that seek to leverage postsecondary public education resources to support regional business interests. We argue that initiatives such as UpSkill Houston are important to investigate, as they are among an increasing trend of new education policy actors and networks that exert control over education policy. © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

While educators and policymakers increasingly link the '21st-century' skills of communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and self-directed learning to graduate success in important high-technology industries, few studies look at how technological college faculty - who are expected to help instil these important skills in students - learn to better teach such skills. Faculty development research shows that feedback- and reflection-oriented social learning improves instruction, but has not typically investigated the full scope of beneficial teaching-focused interactions, formal and informal, in which faculty engage. Using a social network perspective, which focuses on the empirical contours of relationships across settings, this mixed methods study explores (1) the people with whom technological faculty discuss teaching, referred to as 'teaching-focused personal networks;' (2) the comparative contours of these networks by faculty development involvement, teaching experience, institution type, and discipline; and (3) how, if at all, faculty believe these networks influence their communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and self-directed learning instruction. Survey data (n = 192) indicate that most respondents discuss teaching with a core personal network of about four contacts, commonly institutional colleagues, around once a month. Data also show that network size, diversity, and strength - measures connected to actionable, relationship-based information and support, or 'social capital' - are broadly similar among faculty of varying subgroups, with one exception: respondents reporting involvement in in-depth faculty development programming have larger and stronger networks. Qualitative results show that most faculty reporting teaching-focused personal networks perceived them to benefit their teaching of communication, teamwork, problem-solving, or self-directed learning through support, reflection, feedback, and sharing new ideas.

Background Postsecondary institutions are expected to provide students with skills such as communication that are considered essential for success in school, work, and society. However, faculty are rarely trained to design courses that emphasize complex, cultural skills like communication, highlighting the need for professional development that adopts a sociocultural perspective on skills, teaching and faculty learning. Methods In this paper, we describe a mixed-methods study that aimed to document instructional practice based on decision-making interviews (n=25), classroom observations (n=20) and surveys (n=496) with faculty in two U.S. cities. Techniques used to analyze these data include inductive thematic analysis, social network analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling. Findings Results of the analysis include the identification of key elements of course planning - faculty predispositions, perceived affordances, and instructional goals-which dynamically interact to inform teaching practices. Classroom observations revealed a range of methods from lecturing to classroom debates. Results also highlight three factors that led to teaching decisions: prior experience in industry which sensitized faculty to employer needs, social networks, and student skills. Contributions The data contribute to research on skills-focused instruction, and we conclude the paper with a description of a socioculturally informed faculty development program based on study findings.

Scholars have long recognized that teachers' social interactions play an important role in their learning and professional development. Still, while a growing body of research shows that teaching-focused social ties can give precollege educators access to valuable information, knowledge, and advice-or social capital-that improves professional practice and student learning, empirical, mixed methods studies on the phenomenon in the higher education sector are rare, and few investigate what conditions are necessary for these social ties to develop among college instructors. Focusing on college faculty in 17 associate- and baccalaureate-level institutions in one U.S. city, this study uses survey and interview data to explore the connections between structural and positional educator characteristics and the social networks, or compilations of social ties, in which faculty reported discussing teaching. Regression analyses of survey responses (n=244) indicate that fewer years of teaching experience, the time faculty take preparing to teach, discipline, and institution type are correlated with social network dimensions linked to improved professional practice. An inductive analysis of interview data from a subset of faculty (n=22) supplements survey findings with descriptions of how teaching experience, organizational support, and other factors constrain and reinforce the development of teaching-focused social ties. Results confirm and extend prior research indicating that the development of teaching-focused social networks and the accrual of ties linked to social capital demand faculty and organizational investment. Findings also suggest that leaders hoping to foster beneficial ties should tailor instructional initiatives to more closely align with faculty experience and time commitments.

In order to support physics students in their future careers, there is a need to understand the relationship between undergraduate education and professional practice in physics-related fields. This study investigated high-level goal driven mathematical problem-solving activities that are found within two disciplinary cultures: physical science research labs in academia and photonics workplaces in industry. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 Ph.D. students and 22 engineers and technicians. Math use in professional workplaces was characterized through an adaptation of epistemic games framework, which revealed six common epistemic games in these workplaces: conceptual math modeling, analytical-numerical math modeling, design-oriented math modeling, fabrication, improving processes, and making meaning out of data games. The workplace-specific epistemic games capture the goals, starting and ending conditions, constraints and contextual features, moves, tools, and representations. The games involve a broad spectrum of math that ranges from arithmetic to computational modeling. The games reveal how goals and particular contextual features impact approaches to mathematical problem solving. The findings extend prior work on mathematical problem solving in physics to a new population of professional researchers, engineers, and technicians in their workplaces. The research may guide new approaches for developing problems and explicitly teaching problem solving in diverse physics contexts, which may additionally benefit undergraduate students' preparation for their future careers.

As part of a larger study of how problem-solving, communication, and teamwork are integrated into STEM education, we examined how industrial work experience impacts faculty teaching practices around those same competencies. We conducted semi-structured individual interviews with 92 educators in four broad fields, including energy, healthcare, computing, and advanced manufacturing. Educators' industrial experience ranged from no prior experience to a decade or more of industrial experience, which largely depends on STEM field. This paper will report findings from preliminary analysis with six educator interviews in energy and advanced manufacturing. Industry work experience greatly influenced educators' perceptions of the competencies as well as teaching strategies. Instructors with rich industry experience often include more descriptive examples of industrial applications when defining those skills, use industrial-specific tasks to inspire the design of classroom activities, and utilize their industry work experience to help formulate course structure.

Problem-solving is emphasized in introductory physics courses to equip students with tools that hopefully transfer to their future lives and careers. The EMPOWER project interviewed undergraduate STEM majors from computing, manufacturing, nursing, energy, and physics about their perspectives on problem-solving. Sixty-nine student focus groups were conducted, totaling 239 students. All students emphasized the importance of problem-solving in their discipline of study, but no single practice of problem-solving was applicable for all students. Most problem-solving perspectives were unique to each discipline (e.g., perseverance was emphasized in physics, empathy in nursing), while some perspectives were emphasized across several STEM fields (e.g., teamwork). Transferable problem-solving practices were often used alongside specialized practices to handle the unique challenges of each discipline. Findings suggest shifting away from framing problem-solving as a solitary transferable skill and toward framing problem-solving as an integrated set of context-dependent practices.

Math modeling is an iterative process where students use their observations and reasoning abilities to create and refine predictions or explanations about a single referent system (e.g., a lab apparatus). However, modeling may be complicated by the presence of multiple problem representations in an activity (e.g., both a word problem and a video demo), in which case students have multiple referents to consider. To study students' modeling behavior in these situations, we conducted think-aloud interviews with pairs of students around a kinematics activity. While creating process maps of students' modeling, we found that tracking students' system focus was critical to interpreting their reasoning and decisions. The model referent is no longer seen as a static object; instead, it is a dynamic object that changes in response to both structured prompts and spontaneous events. This concept gives rise to practical insights into activity design and implementation.