Linking Faculty Attitudes to Pedagogical Choices: Student-Centered Teaching in Introductory Computing Classes

Research suggests using student-centered practices in the classroom is a key component of attracting and retaining diverse students. To better understand the link between attitudes toward students and learning and the usage of specific teaching strategies, we analyze survey responses from 54 faculty who teach introductory computer science (CS) courses from 15 U.S. colleges and universities participating in BRAID. Using principal component analysis, we scale responses to 10 attitudinal questions into four dimensions: rugged individualism ("learning and success are the individual student's responsibility"), challenging work ("the pace and workload in CS is hard"); a developmental orientation to learning ("students need individual attention in a non-competitive environment"); and capable students ("all students can do well in my class"). We then test these scales on four types of teaching: three student-centered approaches-collaborative learning approaches, discourse activities, and student-led learning-and one traditional approach, lecturing. Results indicate that a developmental orientation predicts the use of discourse activities and student-led practices, but not collaborative learning approaches. Rugged individualism is associated with frequent lecturing. None of our scales predict the use of collaborative learning approaches, and neither attitudes for "challenging work" nor "capable students" predict any of the pedagogical approaches in our study. We examine differences by certain faculty characteristics and discuss the ramifications of these results for promoting more widespread adoption of student-centered teaching.