An electronic newsletter for the science education
community
November
2004
CCMS Faculty
Develop New Teacher-Education Module
An important research
objective of the Center
for Curriculum Materials in Science (CCMS) is to explore pre-service and in-service teacher
development experiences that can help teachers improve their
skills in selecting, analyzing, adapting, and enacting science
curriculum materials. Along with AAAS's Project 2061, the
CCMS partner institutions include Northwestern University,
Michigan State University, and the University of Michigan.
Working together, CCMS provides graduate and postdoctoral
programs, research opportunities, and teacher development
resources focused on improving K-12 science curriculum materials.
At every stage
of their professional development, teachers can benefit
from experiences that help them to recognize the characteristics
of effective curriculum materials and effective teaching
and to understand the value of coherent and interconnected
learning goals for students.
To help address
the need for pre-service teacher education focused on curriculum
materials, faculty from two CCMS partner institutions have
collaborated in developing a new module for use in secondary
science methods courses. Drawing on findings from Project
2061’s evaluations
of middle and high school science textbooks and on the analysis
criteria used in those evaluations, David Fortus of Michigan
State University (MSU) and Joe Krajcik of the University
of Michigan (UM) have designed the new module as an introduction
to
- the role of curriculum materials in shaping classroom
activities and supporting student learning;
- the Project 2061 criteria and their usefulness as measures
of curriculum quality; and
- considerations in selecting, adapting, and enacting
curriculum materials in ways that help students achieve
important learning goals.
Taking
a More Critical Look
According to Fortus,
too many student-teachers assume that a teacher's responsibility
is simply to “teach” a textbook—that
is, to cover all of the material presented in a given
textbook. They hope this new module will help student-teachers
take a more critical look at curriculum materials and
become skillful users of them.
Intended to supplement
science teacher-education courses, the new module requires
three hours of classroom instruction and includes readings,
activities, and handouts. Individual sections of the module
can be configured in a variety of ways making it easy for
instructors to incorporate it into their existing courses.
The module, together with an instructor's guide and pre-
and post-assessments, can be downloaded from the CCMS-MSU
Web site at http://ed-web2.educ.msu.edu/CCMS/.
The module opens
with a challenging question: Why are curriculum materials
important? The student-teachers read and discuss a study
showing that small modifications to curriculum materials
used by teachers—such as adding transparencies designed
to help teachers guide students from common misconceptions
to correct scientific conceptions—led to a change
in the focus of instruction, improvements in the quality
of classroom discussions, and better opportunities for students
to learn.
Knowing
Where You Intend to Go
The module next
addresses reverse design; that is, why it is important
for teachers to know exactly what they want their students
to learn before planning instruction. The module demonstrates
how teachers can make use of AAAS’s Benchmarks
for Science Literacy and the National
Research Council’s National
Science Education Standards to specify a
set of learning goals and learning performances for
their students.
The module also
addresses the quality of today’s textbooks and considers
why most of them fail to foster deep understanding in students
and to provide adequate guidance for teachers. By reading
and discussing Project 2061’s textbook evaluation
studies, the student-teachers reflect on what the findings
mean for them as future teachers. They also consider how
the textbooks used in the classrooms where they are student
teaching would fare if subjected to Project 2061’s
benchmarks-based analysis.
Modifying
the Curriculum
The rest of the
module engages the pre-service teachers in analyzing, modifying,
and enacting curriculum at increasing levels of complexity.
The instructor introduces Project 2061’s curriculum-materials
analysis criteria and demonstrates how to apply one criterion
to a cluster of lessons from Chemistry That Applies,
a teaching unit developed by the Michigan Science Education
Resources Project. The student-teachers then go on to
analyze the cluster using additional criteria. Next
students select an activity from a professional journal
such as The
Physics Teacher that is related to the topic being
taught in their placement classrooms. The selected activity
is analyzed with six different criteria and modified accordingly.
The student-teachers then enact the activity for their
peers, who are already familiar with the original article
and activity, permitting them to identify how the enactment
differs from what they may have expected. A conversation
follows to discuss the purpose, value, and effectiveness
of the modifications to the activity.
Student-teachers
also analyze a chapter from a textbook they use in their
placement classrooms and afterwards compare their conclusions
with their prior opinions about the textbook. Student-teachers
modify the analyzed chapter to improve the support it provides
and teach parts of the modified chapter in their placement
classrooms.
The secondary
science methods module has been used several times at UM
and MSU. Its use has resulted in revisions to the module
that have improved its adaptability for different classroom
environments.
In addition
to the module for secondary level
student-teachers, Mark Enfield, Kristin
Gunckel, Christina Schwarz, and Ed
Smith, all of MSU, have developed
several versions of an elementary
module. One of these versions is
posted on the CCMS-MSU Web site at http://ed-web2.educ.msu.edu/CCMS/.
AETS 2005
Workshop
CCMS will be presenting
the elementary and secondary modules in a workshop at the
Association for the Education of Teachers in Science (AETS)
convention in Colorado Springs next year. The workshop
will generate discussion on the different perceptions
science educators have about the role of curriculum materials
in instruction. The workshop will also aim to enlist educators
in using the secondary module in their own teaching and
then supplying CCMS with feedback on the modules’
effectiveness.
The AETS 2005
International Conference is at Antlers Hilton in Colorado
Springs on January 19-23, 2005.
For more information
on the secondary science methods module, please contact:
MSU-CCMS Faculty Member: Dr.
David Fortus
UM-CCMS Faculty Member: Dr.
Joseph Krajcik
Principal
Investigator: Dr. Jo Ellen Roseman
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