The development of high leverage practices in environmental sustainability-focused service learning courses: applications for higher education

Abstract

High Leverage Practices (HLPs), as a core set of teaching practices, represent important instructional priorities and provide instructional guidance for students’ engagement in practice-based instruction. The goals of this research were to 1) understand how an epistemic community (the people designing and leading courses and programs) viewed the HLP creation process, 2) understand the processes through which the epistemic community actually engaged in the refinement of the HLPS, and 3) identify and present the HLPs created. Data collected across the 2019-2020 academic year included interviews with seven instructors and seven students and four observations of the integration team meetings. First, thematic analysis revealed that the epistemic community members considered the process of creating and refining HLPs central to improving the quality of their instruction. Second, the processes through which the community engaged in HLP refinement included connecting experience and feedback with educational research, identifying the purpose of instructional strategies, sharing practices for instruction, and creating a model for course expansion. Third, the HLPs produced included: 1) eliciting students’ initial ideas, 2) informing approaches to problems, and 3) developing informed solutions to address community environmental challenges. This work informs in the literature, especially in applied STEM education, about HLP creation in the context of an epistemic community.

Keywords:

• Design based implementation research
• environmental education
• epistemic community
• high leverage practices (HLPs)
• service learning
• sustainability

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1915100. And the authors would like to give special thanks to Suzanne LaFleur, a former Director of Faculty Development at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at the University of Connecticut, for her contributions to this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 All names used throughout are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Byung-Yeol Park

Byung-Yeol Park is a postdoctoral research associate in the Neag School of Education at University of Connecticut.

Rebecca Campbell-Montalvo is a postdoctoral research associate in the Neag School of Education at University of Connecticut.

Todd Campbell is the Department Head of Curriculum and Instruction and a Professor of Science Education in the Neag School of Education at University of Connecticut.

Hannah Cooke is a Ph.D. student and a research assistant in the Neag School of Education at University of Connecticut.

Chester Arnold is an Extension Educator and the Director of the University of Connecticut Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR).

John C. Volin is the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and a Professor of School of Forest Resources at University of Maine.

Maria Chrysochoou is the Department Head and a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Connecticut.

Peter C. Diplock is the Associate Vice-Provost for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at University of Connecticut.