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Enacting STEM education reform is a complex task and there are a variety of approaches that might be selected by change agents. When working on an institutional change project to impact multiple parts of the STEM education system, teams of change agents may select multiple strategies and tactics to enact at one time and over multiple years of a project. However, the literature lacks studies which document and analyze strategies and tactics used by change project teams in a way that can be useful for other change agents. The current study seeks to fill this gap by investigating National Science Foundation-funded change initiatives at three public research universities focused on encouraging the adoption of evidenced-based instructional practices by STEM faculty in order to understand the strategies used within and across projects. Qualitative framework analysis using the lens of the Henderson et al. (Journal of Research in Science Teaching 48(8): 952-984, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20439) Four Categories of Change Strategies Model showed that institutional projects enact a wide range of tactics that span the four strategies represented in the four categories of the model both across institutions and within each institution. The analysis documents a number of change tactics not previously described by the model and offers expanded definitions of the change processes that operate within each category in the context of institutional change projects. This descriptive work advances our understanding of the breadth and depth of actions taken by institutional change initiatives and provides insights into types of variations that might be observed based on different institutional contexts. The current analysis both affirms the value of the original model and identifies expanded ways to think about the four categories within the context of institutional change projects.

Background: Calls for science education reform have been made for decades in the USA. The recent call to produce one million new science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates over 10 years highlights the need to employ evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) in undergraduate STEM classes to create engaging and effective learning environments. EBIPs are teaching strategies that have been empirically demonstrated to positively impact student learning, attitudes, and achievement in STEM disciplines. However, the mechanisms and processes by which faculty learn about and choose to implement EBIPs remain unclear. To explore this problem area, we used social network analysis to examine how an instructor's knowledge and use of EBIPs may be influenced by their peers within a STEM department. We investigated teaching discussion networks in biology and chemistry departments at three public universities. Results: We report that tie strength and tie diversity vary between departments, but that mean indegree is not correlated with organizational rank or tenure status. We also describe that teaching discussion ties can often be characterized as strong ties based on two measures of tie strength. Further, we compare peer influence models and find consistent evidence that peer influence in these departments follows a network disturbances model. Conclusions: Our findings with respect to tie strength and tie diversity indicate that the social network structures in these departments vary in how conducive they might be to change. The correlation in teaching practice between discussion partner and peer influence models suggest that change agents should consider local social network characteristics when developing change strategies. In particular, change agents can expect that faculty may serve as opinion leaders regardless of their academic rank and that faculty can increase their use of EBIPs even if those they speak to about teaching use EBIPs comparatively less.