An overview of my case study research into the emergence of leadership within university STEM departments (Southeast R1 institution) working to shift to more learner-centered teaching practices. Keywords: Relational Leadership Theory, Knowledge Life Cycle, organizational learning, complexity theory, learner-centered teaching, higher education, STEM education

2. Leading from Within:
A Case Study of Relational Leadership Emergence
within Undergraduate STEM Departments
Adopting Evidence-Based Teaching Practices
Lori Ramey, M.A., M.Ed.
Committee Members:
Dr. Jeff Martin (chair)
Dr. Jack Knipe
Dr. Jenny Presgraves

3. Researcher Background
Experienced K12 educator
(English)
College teaching experience
(writing)
Employed at 3 different
undergraduate institutions
of varying size (tiny,
medium, and very large)
Work experience
• team lead and project manager
• creative director
• curriculum development
• student advising and coaching
• teaching
First-generation college student
M.Ed. (Integrated Curriculum
& Instruction)

4. Background to the Problem
STEM has a student retention problem.
Instructional techniques are
one part of the problem.
• Fewer than 40% of STEM majors (undergraduate) complete
a STEM degree
• Women & minorities equal 70% of college entrants but
earn only 30% of STEM degrees
• Institutions must increase the number of STEM grads
significantly to meet future workforce demands.
Stains et al., 2018 observed 2,000 class sessions by
548 faculty across North America:
55% lecture only + 27% lecture + clickers
PCAST, 2012; H.Rep. No. 116-184, 2019, Seymour & Hunter,
1999 & 2019, Stains et al., 2018

5. STEM instruction is changing
Recent trends in university-level teaching:
Discipline-specific
SoTL (Scholarship
of Teaching and
Learning)
EBIP’s:
Evidence-based
instructional
practices
Active Learning
and Learner
Centered
Teaching (LCT)
Training PhD’s
to teach as part
of their doctoral
curriculum
Departments are the power centers for change*
Kezar, 2014; Henderson, Beach & Finkelstein, 2011 and 2012
*but change efforts fail
easily without institutional
support or leadership for
change that involves all
relevant stakeholders

6. Literature Overview
Review of the Literature: Instructional Change
STEM faculty
may be less
familiar with
education
research, social
science, or non-
quantitative
research
sources which
publish EBIPs
Individuals often
cannot change a
system, but
departmental
efforts can drive
lasting change if
they receive
sufficient
institutional
support
Four Categories
of Change
+ Change Agent
Roles
Coleman, Smith &
Miller, 2019
Faculty usually
ignore pre-made
curriculum
materials
Henderson, Beach &
Finkelstein, 2011
Top-down change
initiatives almost
never work.
Must target beliefs
Fisher & Henderson, 2018
Apkarian et al, 2019
Kezar, Gehrke & Elrod, 2015
Henderson, Beach &
Finkelstein, 2012
Borrego & Henderson, 2014
+ Martin & Marion, 2005

7. Theoretical Frameworks

8. I: Organizational Knowledge
Organizational
knowledge creation:
“the capability of a
company as a whole to
create new knowledge,
disseminate it
throughout the
organization, and
embody it in products,
services, and systems”
(Nonaka & Takeuchi,
1995, p. 3).
Theoretical
Foundation:
Complex
Adaptive
Systems
“learn”
Complex adaptive
system (CAS):
a “neural-like network of
interacting, interdependent
agents who are bonded in a
collective dynamic by
common need” (Uhl-Bien &
Marion, 2009, p. 19).

9. I: Organizational Knowledge
Theoretical Foundation: Organizational Knowledge Processing
Organizational learning refers to “how people and groups in complex
social systems organize themselves around learning and problem-
solving — or even to detect problems.”
This learning often involves people working outside their on-paper job
roles.
McElroy, 2003, p. xiv

10. Theoretical
Foundation:
Organizational
Knowledge
Processing
The Knowledge Life
Cycle™ (Firestone &
McElroy, 2003), is one
model for how a complex
organization processes
and integrates knowledge
to “learn.”
I: Organizational Knowledge
“OK” = Organizational Knowledge
explore, validate, and integrate

11. I. Organizational Knowledge
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs):
Leadership Roles within the KLC
As emergent processes of a complex system, knowledge processing behaviors are self-organizing
and social, meaning that leaders can reinforce learning behaviors which benefit the cycle and “set
the conditions” for healthy organizational learning — but leaders often cannot directly affect
these emergent behaviors, only the environment for the KLC.
Leadership Roles shaping HEI knowledge processing
• Environment Manager
• Network Manager
• Policy Manager
• Crisis Manager
• Knowledge Gap Identifier
• Future Leader Preparation
Martin & Marion, 2005

12. When an organization is learning,
what does leadership look like?
This leads us to our second
theoretical framework:
Relational Leadership Theory

13. II. Leadership Theory
“Individual people do not possess leadership;
leadership happens when people participate in
collaborative forms of thought and action.”
(Drath, 2001, p. 15).
William Drath

14. II: Leadership Theory
Constructivist vs Constructionist
“Leadership” is
constructed internally
by the person
experiencing it.
“Leadership,” being a group
property, is constructed in and
through interactions of the
group as a whole, not just by
the individual.
Ospina & Uhl-Bien,
2012, p. xxxiii
“Leadership is a
process of social
construction
produced through
relationship.”
Ospina & Uhl-Bien, 2012, p 7
Crotty, 1988; Ospina & Sorenson, 2006

15. II. Leadership Theory
Theoretical Foundation: RLT
Relational Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien, Ospina)
“The focus of Relational Leadership Theory research is a better
understanding of the relational dynamics — the social processes — that
comprise leadership and organizing. Relational Leadership Theory sees
leadership as the process by which social systems change through the
structuring of roles and relationships” (Ospina & Uhl-Bien, 2010, p. 668).
Seeing leadership as a shared or collective activity, an emergent quality
of a group of people focused on achieving a goal, and existing only within
relationships pushes leadership studies away from a heroic, leader-centric
approach.

16. II. Leadership Theory
Theoretical Foundation: RSLT
“What type of leadership finally
emerges from the social
construction processes
among individuals?” (p. 216).
Relational Social
Constructionist Leadership
(Endres & Weibler, 2017)
Endres & Weibler, 2017, p. 225

17. II. Leadership Theory
Loosely Coupled (Karl Weick)
“Loose coupling suggests that any location in an organization (top, middle, or bottom) contains
interdependent elements that vary in the number and strength of their interdependencies. … The
resulting image is a system that is simultaneously open and closed, indeterminate and rational,
spontaneous, and deliberate” (Orton & Weick, 1990, p. 204).
Collegial Framework for Academic Management (Robert Birnbaum)
• collegial management by consensus
• bureaucratic management by process
• political management by referee
• anarchical models where no central authority exists …
• plus a “cybernetic” model in which two or more of the other four models exist
within the same institution (Birnbaum, 1988)

18. Importance of the Research
Gaps in the Literature
• Mechanisms of influence
within loosely-coupled STEM
departments are unclear
• The interplay of
constructionist leadership
theory and knowledge life
cycles has not garnered much
attention from researchers
Addressing the Gap
• Combination of two theories:
RSLT and the KLC Framework
• Deeper investigation of the
roles of leaders (formal and
informal) within higher
education change (knowledge
processing): the power of the
middle (meso level)

19. Problem statement
We don’t know how leadership emerges among the faculty in a
department trying to change its teaching practices (RLT).
We don’t know how STEM faculty experience or participate in the
knowledge processing cycle (KLC) within their department, whether
functioning well or dysfunctional.
We don’t know much about the interplay of organizational change
theories, relational leadership theory (RLT), and knowledge
processing (KLC) within the context of a university academic department.
Academic departments drive change at higher education
institutions, but we do not fully understand the mechanisms of
leadership influence within the knowledge life cycle of a loosely
coupled, collegial department.

20. The purpose of the study:
(a) how leadership
emerges within
STEM departments
attempting to
change instructional
practices to follow
evidence-based
approaches;
(b) what leaders
(formal and
informal) do to
facilitate
knowledge
emergence,
validation, and
integration among
faculty in the
department;
(c) how faculty
members
participate in and
experience the
processes which
allow for knowledge
creation, validation,
and integration.
To examine

21. Research Question
Within university STEM departments
attempting to change how they teach,
how does leadership emerge and develop
during efforts to explore, validate, and
integrate new instructional practices?

22. Methods and Data
Leading from Within:
A Case Study of Relational Leadership Emergence
within Undergraduate STEM Departments
Adopting Evidence-Based Teaching Practices

23. Philosophical Foundations
Bryant & Charmaz, 2019
Theoretical
Perspective:
symbolic
interactionism
Ontology: relativist
Epistemology:
constructionist
Methodology
Constructivist Case
Study (Stake) using
Grounded Theory
analysis (Charmaz)

24. Research Procedures & Methods
A Case Study Approach
“The real business of case study is particularization, not
generalization. We take a particular case and come to know it well, not
primarily as to how it is different from others but what it is, what it
does. There is emphasis on uniqueness, and that implies knowledge of
others that the case is different from, but the first emphasis is on
understanding itself.”
(Stake, 1995, p. 8).

25. Research Procedures & Methods
Why Case Study?
Eisenhardt (1989) argues for
using a case study approach in
situations “where little is
known, or theories are
untested and new, when
theories conflict with one
another, or when a new
perspective is needed on the
issue” (p. 548).
Methodology is “an ‘applied’ ontology and
epistemology
(Hatch & Yanow, 2008)
A qualitative case study
(1) has the goal of understanding rather
than explaining a situation;
(2) acknowledges the personal
involvement of the researcher in data
collection and analysis; and
(3) assumes a constructivist approach to
knowledge
(Stake, 1995, p. 37).

26. Defining the Case
Elger, 2010
Theoretical
Common Sense Methodological
The Case: Emergent, relational leadership within the knowledge processing cycles in
undergraduate STEM departments at “The University” where faculty are working to change
their teaching methods to use more learner-centered or evidence-based practices.
Instrumental (Stake): using a case to explore a larger question, to understand (Stake, 1995, p. 3)
Exploratory (Yin): defining questions for future inquiry (Yin, 2002, p. 5)
Bounding the Case
• Practical logistics of
the site and access to
participants
• Large enough institution to
have a KLC I could study, with
enough faculty for significant
interactions
• Constructivist methods lead to
a few participants but “deep
and rich” data
• Natural boundary:
academic department
• Faculty in STEM
• Involved in
instructional practice
research

27. The Site
“The University” (aka TU)
• R1 research institution in the Southeastern United States
• Recognized as a flagship institution in its state university
system
• Reputation for offering strong STEM degrees
• USN&WR Best Colleges:
• 50 Undergrad Teaching
• Most Innovative;
• Top 100 National Universities
• College Factual: One of 2022 Best Colleges in Southeast
• An emphasis on both undergraduate teaching and rigorous
faculty research
• 2016 Strategic Plan identifies key goals of creating
“exceptional learning and living spaces”; enhancing
academic learning at all levels
• Large institution with many STEM departments
• I could access faculty via personal connections
Selecting a site:
• “maximize what we can learn”
• uniqueness and context
• best example the researcher can
actually access; not distracted
by finding the “best” site
• within real-world limitations
(Stake, 1995, p. 4)

28. Study Population and Sampling
Faculty engaged in
changing or improving
instructional practice
STEM departments (Science,
Technology, Engineering,
Mathematics) working to
change instructional practices
At a Southeastern R1
institution offering
undergraduate degrees
Sampling
Purposeful
Palinkas, 2015
Charmaz, 2014
SATURATION

29. Study Population and Sampling
Fusch and Ness (2015):
Data saturation occurs when
(a)“there is enough information to
replicate the study,”
(b)“when the ability to obtain additional
new information has been attained,”
and
(c)“when further coding is no longer
feasible” (p. 1408).
Sampling
Purposeful
Palinkas, 2015
Charmaz, 2014
SATURATION

30. Four Participants
Debra
“Arrow”
Tenured
15+ yrs at TU
Christopher
”Square”
Tenured
5-10 yrs at TU
David
“Star”
Tenured
5-10 yrs at TU
Sarah
“Triangle”
Tenure-track
<5 yrs at TU
Clipart from Freepik.com. Used with permission.
1 full-time DBER and one part-time DBER are represented here

31. Timeline of Data Collection
SATURATION
March 2021 April May June July August September October
Proposal
Defense
Final
Coding
Pilot Interviews
Data Sources
• Semi-structured interviews (Zoom*)
• Transcripts (Temi + correcting by hand)
• Analytic memos
• Documents (when available) * Covid-19
🦠

32. Data Analysis
“Case study is not a methodological
choice but a choice of what is to be
studied. By whatever methods, we
choose to study the case.”
(Stake, 2003, p. 134).

33. Data Analysis using Grounded Theory
Data Generation
Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3
Initial
Coding
Focused
Coding
Generate
Insights
SATURATION Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2016
GT allows for a theoretical lens during analysis (Gibson & Hartman, 2013)

34. Data Analysis
Initial coding of segments from the four
interviews yielded a first-cycle codebook
of
174
initial, specific codes.
In each interview, at least 80% of the
lines in the transcript were assigned at
least one code.

35. Data Analysis

36. Legitimacy, Rigor, Trustworthiness
In place of of “reliability and validity,” qualitative researchers
strive for legitimacy, rigor, and trustworthiness:
• An audit trail for all data handling and analysis procedures; history
of coding and analysis stored in MAXQDA
• Analytic memos written immediately after the interview and again
during data coding
• Triangulation with corroborating documents such as class syllabi,
faculty blog posts, university faculty member home page, etc.
• Credibility through “thick, rich” descriptions arising from the
interview data, embracing contradictory viewpoints
• Reflexivity of the researcher

37. Findings
Leading from Within:
A Case Study of Relational Leadership Emergence
within Undergraduate STEM Departments
Adopting Evidence-Based Teaching Practices

38. Research Question
Within University STEM departments
attempting to change how they teach,
how does leadership emerge and develop
during efforts to explore, validate, and
integrate new instructional practices?

39. Four “Windows” into the Case
Clipart from Freepik.com. Used with permission.
Christopher (Square)
- Grant-funded curriculum
redevelopment program on the
rocks due to leadership turnover
- Teaching incentives are not
aligned to pay and promotion
- Good teaching = efficient and
effective
Debra (Arrow)
- Faculty Learning Communities
(FLCs) are powerful at
connecting faculty beyond
departmental lines, allowing
informal influence to flourish
- Innovation happens within
community
David (Star)
- The University’s bureaucratic
structures greatly hinder
innovation and change
- Sheer class size makes
implementing instructional
change difficult
Sarah (Triangle)
- Small major / department offers
distinct advantages to informal
leaders
- Incentivized to improve
teaching to recruit new majors
- Most happy with TU’s
teaching culture

40. Within-Case Analysis
Theme I. Faculty
develop socially
constructed
understandings of
“good teaching,”
forming the basis
for leadership
influence.
Theme II. Informal
leadership influence
flows primarily
horizontally
(among peers),
crossing
departmental
boundaries during
times of instructional
change and
innovation.
Theme III. The
University’s loosely
coupled, collegial power
bases within the larger
bureaucratic institution
shape the macro,
meso, and micro
emergence of leadership
and organizational
learning.

41. I. Socially constructed “good teaching”
Faculty develop socially constructed understandings of what
constitutes “good teaching,” a basis for leadership influence.
- Good teaching is more “efficient” and “effective” and “interesting”; it “saves me time” as well as
contributes to student success.
- Interview responses reveal a developed, socially constructed concept shaped by interactions with key
people at The University – workshops, the CTL, Faculty Learning Communities, informal conversations.
- External demands (class sizes) and requirements (discipline, certifications) set boundaries on
possibilities. Also, some faculty are resistant to any change that requires more work.
[Case study teaching] actually makes [students] apply the
information they're getting from the classroom in a simulated
real-world setting. This is my hope. … It's not just giving them
a case study and telling them to write a report. It's as much the
process of getting them to understand.
I hate tests. I'd rather replace them all with assignments. It
just becomes a balancing act [vs coverage of concepts].
David

42. II. Horizontal influence
Theme II. Informal leadership flows primarily horizontally (among
peers), crossing departmental boundaries during times of change.
- Rather than “up” or “down,” the interviewees primarily influence peers in and beyond the department.
- Cross-departmental Faculty Learning Communities are particularly powerful opportunities for growth,
because faculty members feel more “safe” to explore and ask questions when they are not in front of
their departmental peers or the chair.
- The distributed nature of faculty power in a collegial, loosely coupled department means that decisions
must be made by consensus, both hindering and enabling “sideways” influence flow.
[Faculty attending the FLCs said,] “I don’t feel like I have to, in my
department, act like, ‘Oh, I know everything,’ like with your
department chair or with your other faculty.” It was a very safe place to
feel vulnerable, get peer support, but also learn from each other.
Debra

43. III. Macro, meso, micro effects
Theme III. The University’s loosely coupled, collegial power bases
within the larger bureaucratic institution shape the macro, meso,
and micro emergence of leadership and organizational learning.
- The formal power structures (chain of command) exert significant control over how influence and
resources can flow to promote innovation and change. Vision and resources are key to change.
- The tenured faculty with more experience at TU were far more skeptical of the University’s investment
in good teaching vs the younger Sarah, who is tenure-track and more aware of recent efforts. The
misaligned incentives (research vs teaching) tend to undermine the talk about excellence in teaching.
I am in a [teaching] position where I see lots of the upper administration
who are taking great pains to improve undergraduate education…. And so
I … see a lot of these larger initiatives that are taking place at the college
or university level.”
Sarah
At some basic level, the university level incentives are just not there and they
can talk about being student focused and everything else, but until they reward
faculty for doing that, [faculty won’t get on board].
Christopher

44. Connections to leadership literature
Departments are central to change
efforts. Change cannot take root
without both faculty support plus
resources and vision provided by the
bureaucracy and key executive leaders
(see Kezar, 2014).
Loosely coupled, collegial
departments shape how influence
flows within an academic
department, following the lines of
RSLT (Endres & Weibler, 2017;
Ospina & Uhl-Bien, 2012).
Higher Education Institutions are complex adaptive organizations,
comprising overlapping centers of power and interests (cf. Birnbaum, 1988;
Weick, 1976).

45. Connections to KLC literature
Leading Knowledge Life Cycles:
Three of Martin & Marion’s (2005) roles for executive leaders appeared.
Faculty seem to be “informally” engaged in these leadership activities
within the KLC:
Leadership Roles in higher ed knowledge processing
• Environment Manager
• Network Manager
• Policy Manager
• Crisis Manager
• Knowledge Gap Identifier
• Future Leader Preparation
“Leadership best serves by enabling (as opposed to
enacting or controlling) the knowledge-processing
environment” (Martin & Marion, 2005, p. 140).
• Cultural formation
• Faculty Learning
Communities (FLCs)
• Individual vs
departmental KLCs
• Early adopters

46. Implications of the Findings
The complexity of HEI’s,
particularly as loosely coupled
organizations with overlapping
collegial and bureaucratic power
bases, inhibits innovation.
- Under-hired for teaching
- Misaligned incentives
- Lack of physical space
- Leadership “churn”
- Bureaucratic gridlock
Formal leaders should adopt the
six roles for leaders in a KLC (see
Martin & Marion) while enabling
informal influencers in
departments to assist within their
three roles.
Executives bear the responsibility
to “fix” dysfunctional KLCs at the
institutional level and to create an
environment for change.
1 2

47. Implications of the Findings
Because no one can “make"
faculty change, their
horizontal influence is key
to changing how “good
teaching” is defined within
their social context.
RLT offers a good, workable
model for understanding
leadership emergence within
departments.
3
Individual influence cannot
overwhelm the loosely coupled
system or the bureaucratic
power structures; likewise, a
top-down approach to change
will never succeed on its own.
4 Leaders interested in
instructional change should
appoint more DBER faculty.

48. Strengths of the Study
• Offers specific examples of how individual faculty members
participate in and experience informal leadership influence, as seen
through a constructionist lens.
• Cross-pollination of RLT with the KLC Framework of McElroy &
Firestone offers new pathways to explore informal and distributed
leadership influence in academic departments.
• Affirmation of academic departments as a key site where change efforts
succeed or fail.

49. Limitations of the Study
• Qualitative research is local in
nature and not meant to be
generalizable outside of its context
(Tracy, 2000).
• The compressed timeframe for
data collection inherent in the
Converse PLP program places
natural limits on finding
participants, data collection, and
analyzing data for a qualitative
study.
• Small number of participants
• Covid-19 restrictions prevented the
researcher from doing in-person
interviews, field observations, or
other in-person data collection to
triangulate data.
• The researcher is the data
collection instrument, a co-creator
of the data, and subject to
knowledge gaps or bias.

50. Future Directions
• Further research into the network effects
of relational leadership influence
• How faculty socially construct their
concepts of “good teaching” and what
values are hidden in those constructs
• The influence of people like DBERs or
”early adopters” on a departmental KLC
• Questions of power and control – are
institutions stripping power from faculty
through top-down approaches to change
This case study offers an invitation
for future study and deeper research
into STEM departments as drivers for
instructional change via the
powerful combination of an
emergent, complexity-aware
leadership theory with an
emergent, complexity-aware
organizational learning
framework.

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science Quarterly, 21(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.2307/2931875

52. Leading from Within:
A Case Study of Relational Leadership Emergence
within Undergraduate STEM Departments
Adopting Evidence-Based Teaching Practices
Lori Ramey, M.A., M.Ed.
Committee Members:
Dr. Jeff Martin (chair)
Dr. Jack Knipe
Dr. Jenny Presgraves