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.