Identifying factors that influence student-centered teaching in the undergraduate classroom: A structural equation modeling analysis

Research demonstrates that increased interaction between college students and faculty promotes student development, learning enrichment, and improved retention efforts. Instructional research across all disciplines encourages faculty to use methods in the classroom that incorporate active learning principles, and many constituents believe promoting active and student-centered learning practices in the classroom will enhance undergraduate education. However, faculty members overwhelmingly rely on lectures. Research is limited in the area of faculty role behavior and influences on the use of student-centered teaching, but several initial studies suggested personal attributes of instructors, academic discipline, and the organizational/work environment significantly influence the use of active teaching methods.; The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of faculty, institutions, and academic disciplines that are related to innovation in undergraduate instruction. Therefore, this study answered the following research question: What attributes of academia influence the use of instructional alternatives in the undergraduate classroom? Furthermore, this study investigated how student-centered learning differed across disciplines by using Holland Personality Types as the criterion of analysis---Social, Artistic, Enterprising, and Investigative/Realistic groups. The study specifically evaluated how the use of student-centered learning differed based on the instructor's perceptions of institutional climate, perceptions of the undergraduate students, scholarly productivity, gender, and the institutional enrollment. To answer these questions, I used the 1999 National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty as my database and developed a path model using structural equation modeling (SEM) to identify the academic influences on student-centered learning.; Results from the analysis indicated that several variables impacted teaching motivation and the use of instructional alternatives: Institutional enrollment, race, gender, graduate experience, perception of the undergraduate student, perception of the teaching climate, and scholarly productivity. These results also indicated that institutional and individual characteristics influenced student-centered teaching differently by Holland Personality types. The results strengthen previous findings in this area of research and highlight the impact of academic disciplines on instructional practices in the undergraduate classroom.