CCMS Conference Participation, Year 4 (2005–2006)
(Listed in chronological order of Conference)
NSTA Assessment Conference, Chicago, IL, November 9, 2005
George DeBoer (AAAS)
Project 2061's vision of science literacy for all includes the expectation that students will become critical consumers of scientific claims and arguements. Scienctific claims and argements can range from the simple and commonplace (the reason my plant died is that I didn't water it over the weekend) to reports of major scientific studies in the popular media. Understanding the nature of scientific knowledge and how knowledge is generated in science is important to being an informed critic of scientific ideas.
We assume that knowing about the nature of science will make someone better at judging whether the results and findings of scientific investigations are likely to be valid. We do not expect students to judge whether scientific claims are correct, but that they can tell whether or not attention was paid to such things as bias on the part of the researchers, the possibility of over-generalizing results beyond what is reasonable from the observations that were made, and the soundness of the logic of the arguments. Students will not be expected to determine how large a sample needs to be, but they should question a report in which grand claims are based on a very small number of subjects that may not be representative of the larger population. We draw primarily from the benchmarks in Chapter 12: Habits of Mind, Section E to identify these critical-response learning goals. Additional related learning goals come from Chapter 1: Nature of Science and Chapter 9: The Mathematical World. Statements from Science for All Americans and Benchmarks for Science Literacy, as well as a number from the National Science Education Standards (NSES),are the source of the key ideas that follow. Because of the considerable overlap between Benchmarks and Standards, statements from NSES are generally listed only when they address a point that is not made in Benchmarks or Science for All Americans. We have identified four key ideas:
- Scientific knowledge is obtained by making sense of the world through observation and thoughtful consideration of phenomena; it is not based on authority, appeal to supernatural powers, or personal or popular opinions.
- Scientific knowledge is based on logically sound arguments.
- Scientific knowledge includes claims of causal relationship between variables.
- In principle all of scientific knowledge is subject to change, although much of it is stable over time.
NSTA Southern Area Conference, Nashville, TN, December 2, 2005
Aligning Science Assessment Items to Content Standards
George DeBoer (AAAS)
Student assessments have long served as an indicator of educational success and can be a powerful force in improving curriculum and instruction. Current reform efforts emphasize the importance of aligning assessment with important learning goals. Developers and users of student assessments are continually faced with the challenge of determining whether an assessment task can effectively reveal what students know and are able to do with respect to the content standards. Project 2061 has developed a procedure for examining the alignment of assessment tasks to the ideas and skills they were written to access. The procedure is useful to national and state assessment developers, and to curriculum developers and classroom teachers who use assessment tasks as a basis for important instructional decisions. In this workshop, the alignment procedure will be demonstrated and participants will practice using the procedure on test items from middle school chemistry and the nature of science.
Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE) International Conference, Portland, OR, January 12-14, 2006
Papers
Bongani Bantwini & Barbara Hug (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
This study explored the extent to which professional development models in one school district meet elementary teachers’ immediate and long-term needs.
Exploring Pre-service Elementary Teachers’ Critique
and Adaptation of Science Curriculum Materials in Respect to Socioscientific
Issues
Cory T. Forbes & Elizabeth A. Davis (UM)
The work presented here represents preliminary work undertaken to address the crucial role of the teacher in supporting students’ learning and decision-making about socioscientific issues, particularly through their use of curriculum materials. The objectives of this pilot study were to characterize pre-service elementary teachers’ critique and adaptation of science curriculum materials dealing with socioscientific issues and identify factors that serve to mediate this process. Four undergraduate pre-service elementary teachers in an elementary science teaching methods course were studied over the course of one semester. Results from the study indicate that the teachers critiqued and adapted curriculum materials dealing with socioscientific issues in ways that were both consistent and inconsistent with their previous work in the science methods course. Also, the teachers’ subject-matter knowledge, informal reasoning about socioscientific issues, and their role identity (especially in regard to value-neutral practice) emerged as mediating factors in their efforts. Implications for science teacher education and the design of curriculum materials, particularly those intended to be educative for teachers, are discussed.
Teaching and Learning Science with a Technology-Based Curricula
M. Elizabeth Gonzalez & Barbara Hug (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Marina Masullo (Excuela Normal Superior Dr Agustín Garzón Agulla, Argentina)
This research examined the enactment of a technology-rich science curriculum in a community college in Cordoba, Argentina. Pre-service elementary teachers participated in research.
Challenges in Teaching about Curriculum Materials to Elementary Pre-service Teachers
Kristin L. Gunckel & Blakely K. Tsurusaki (MSU), and Mark Enfield (University of North Carolina)
This presentation discusses challenges involved in helping pre-service teachers learn to select, evaluate, modify, and use curriculum materials thoughtfully and critically to teach science.
Effects of the Learning and Teaching Human Biology Course on In-service Teachers’ Content Knowledge for Teaching Human Biology (or Pedagogical Content Knowledge)
David Kanter, Emily Kemp, & Kimberly Tester (NU)
A measure of content knowledge for teaching human biology based on in-class video analysis changed with in-service teachers' participation in a graduate course.
Assessing and Addressing Pre-service Teachers’ Misconceptions about Earth Systems
Julia Lambert (Florida Atlantic University)
National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, April 3-6, 2006
Symposia (Round Table Format)
Supporting Learning Progressions of Modern Genetics in High School
Ravit Golan Duncan (Rutgers University), Hadas Gelbart & Anat Yarden (Weitzmann Institute of Science), Joseph Krajcik & Aaron Rogat (UM), and Jo Ellen Roseman & Lori Kurth (AAAS)*
Understanding molecular genetics is essential for science literacy. All citizens need a basic understanding of molecular genetics to make decisions regarding health care, reproduction, and lifestyle. However, most high school biology textbooks either fail to cover such topics or do so ineffectively. Moreover, molecular genetics presents conceptual challenges for most learners, requiring students to understand fundamental concepts from chemistry and physics and to make connections among multiple levels of biological organization—molecules, cells, organs and organ systems, organisms. As a science education research community, we need to learn more about how to teach this challenging subject to all learners. This colloquium brings together four research groups who have begun to think through and examine how to help students and teachers cope with these challenging ideas. These scholars have carefully examined student learning outcomes and the challenges posed for students and teachers, considered alternative instructional approaches, and developed instructional materials. The participants and discussant will focus their remarks around the challenges we face as a research community in understanding more about the teaching and learning of molecular genetics. These challenges focus around three areas: (1) identifying appropriate learning goals and progressions, (2) designing effective curriculum and instruction, and (3) promoting teacher learning.
*Authors by alphabetical order and research group
[In symposium organized by Brian Reiser (NU) and Joe Krajcik (UM)]
Katherine McNeill (UM) and Leema Kuhn (NU)
Recent research literature (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000; Duschl, 1990) and reform documents (AAAS, 1990; NRC, 1996) emphasize students constructing evidence-based scientific explanations and engaging in scientific argumentation, in which learners defend, critique, and revise their understandings with their peers. Yet this scientific inquiry practice rarely occurs in classrooms (D. Kuhn, 1993; Newton, Driver, & Osborne 1999). When students do engage in scientific explanation and argumentation, they frequently have difficulty. For example, students struggle to use appropriate evidence (Sandoval, 2003) or provide the backing for why they chose their evidence (Bell & Linn, 2000) and classroom discussions tend to be dominated by claims with little justification (Jiménez-Aleixandre, Rodríguez, & Duschl, 2000). IQWST has designed an instructional framework for scientific explanation that makes explicit the different components–claims, supported by evidence and reasoning (L. Kuhn & Reiser, 2005; McNeill et al., in review). In this paper, we discuss the learning progression we have developed to introduce greater complexity and to help build students’ understanding of scientific explanation and argumentative discourse over the middle school years and science content. For example, in 6th grade we focus on helping students understand what counts as evidence while in the 8th grade we introduce more complex issues such as having students consider counter claims and evidence.
Roundtable Discussion
Supporting Students’ Understanding of Current Genetics in High School
Aaron Rogat (UM)
Colloquia
Sequencing and Supporting Complex Scientific Inquiry Practices in Instructional Materials for Middle School Students
Aaron Rogat (NU) and Christina Schwarz (MSU)
Christina Schwarz (MSU), Jennifer L. Cartier (University of Pittsburgh), Elizabeth A. Davis (UM), Sarah-Kate LaVan (University of Pennsylvania), and Carla Zembal-Saul (Pennsylvania State University)
In this colloquium, the five participants will outline and discuss approaches, frameworks, and tools each has used for enabling pre-service elementary teachers to learn how to become effective science teachers. The group will begin by framing mutual goals for their work and this session. Then, each author will describe a core component of her approach with pre-service teachers and how the approach impacts pre-service teacher learning or practice. Such approaches range from helping pre-service teachers engage and understand explanation- or argumentation-driven inquiry, to learning and implementing instructional models, to adapting and using curriculum materials in productive ways, to learning how to construct culturally responsive pedagogy. Subsequently, we will engage in a working session to synthesize these frameworks, approaches, and findings in order to create even more coherent and effective methods for helping pre-service elementary teachers learn to teach science. As a part of the working session, we will also discuss the tensions that exist in addressing the multiple, substantial learning goals for pre-service elementary teachers as well as possibilities for how to address these tensions.
Multiple Paper Set
Learning Progressions in Environmental Literacy
Organizer & Presider: Charles Anderson (MSU), Discussant: Richard Duschl (Rutgers University)
Understanding of Matter Transformations in Physical and Chemical Changes
In-Young Cho, Hui Jin, Charles Anderson (MSU)
Developing a Carbon Cycle Learning Progression for K-12
Ajay Sharma, Lindsey Mohan, Charles Anderson (MSU)
Diversity and Evolution in Environmental Systems
John Lockhart and Charles Anderson (MSU)
Connecting Personal Actions to Environmental Systems
Blakely Tsurusaki and Charles Anderson (MSU)
Papers
‘A Sketch Is Like a Sentence’: The Role of Curriculum Materials in Supporting Teachers and Helping Students Learn the Representational, Communicative, Epistemic and Conceptual Ideas and Practices of Science
Mark Enfield (University of North Carolina), David Grueber & Edward Smith (MSU)
This research reports on a study of curriculum materials development and enactment as well as the enactment of existing materials in an elementary classroom. The research explored the ways that instructional scaffolds strategically included in curriculum materials supported a teacher and her students learning scientific ideas as well as practices which include: asking questions, collecting data, making descriptions of observations and date using particular representational practices, finding patterns in the data, and the development of scientific reasoning. Findings suggest that students began to engage in scientific reasoning when the instructional scaffolds were included in materials. In contrast, when another curriculum material was used, the students did not engage in as much scientific reasoning. Similarly, through experiences with the designed materials, the teacher showed changes in terms of her thinking about the kinds of support that students needed in order to develop understandings and learn to engage in scientific practices.
Technology Rich Science Curricula in a Science Pre-service Program in Argentina
M. Elizabeth Gonzalez & Barbara Hug (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Sequencing and Supporting Complex Scientific Inquiry Practices in Instructional Materials for Middle School Students
Barbara Hug (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Designing investigations can help students learn how to approach and solve problems both in science and in everyday life by teaching them how to ask questions and design unconfounded experiments. In order to successfully design investigations, students need to access necessary content, frame questions to design experiments around, develop plans for these investigations, and understand the concept of a “fair test.” Research has shown that students often have difficulty with these different components of designing experiments, such as the identification of controls (variables to manipulate and measure), as well as the creation of necessary procedures to carry out the investigation (Chen & Klahr, 1999; Toth, Klahr & Chen, 2000). While students have difficulty in designing investigations, given the necessary scaffolds and supports they can be successful. For example, students can ask their own questions, and design and carry out investigations to find the solution to their questions (Krajcik et al., 1998; Klahr, 2000; Metz, 2000; White & Frederiksen, 2000). The challenge is to identify ways to successfully support students as they develop the necessary skills and understanding to carry out investigations and to make meaning from them. I will discuss what we have learned about developing a learning progression to allow students to design scientific investigations over the middle school years.
Learning, Teaching, and Representing Human Biology Pedagogical Content Knowledge
David Kanter, Emily Kemp, & Kimberly Tester (NU)
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of a graduate-levelcourse entitled Learning and Teaching Human Biology designed to improve in-service teachers' human biology pedagogical contentknowledge (PCK). Three teachers participated in this course during the 2003-2004 school year while simultaneously enacting a project-based,inquiry-driven human biology curriculum. Using videotape from their own enactments of two lessons, teachers completed written narrativeassignments designed to measure how they used their PCK and content knowledge to guide students toward a meaningful understanding ofcontent through conceptual change. These assessments were coded by teaching episode to determine how well teachers used PCK "on their feet."Video was used to double-check the accuracy of self-reported student-teacher exchanges. Results showed trends in teachers' PCK developmentthrough documentation of teachers' ability to use their human biology PCK to teach for conceptual change around specific content. It isconcluded that further research on such courses will lead to a better understanding of PCK development as well as generate effective ways to train teachers to use their PCK and thereby improve students' learning.
Designing Middle School Science Curriculum Materials to Foster Students’ Developing Deep Understanding of Key Learning Goals.
Joseph Krajcik & Katherine McNeill (UM)
Understanding content knowledge and scientific reasoning are important for students’ successful use of scientific practices (Kuhn, Schauble, & Garcia-Mila, 1992; Metz, 2000). Since students have difficulty constructing high-quality scientific explanations (Sadler, 2004), we use written scaffolds to support students. Scaffolds allow learners to complete more advanced activities and engage in more advanced thinking (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). Consequently, we ask whether it is more effective for written scaffolds to focus on content or scientific practices when supporting students in constructing scientific explanations. This study focuses on an eight-week standards-based chemistry curriculum designed to support 7th graders in their understanding of and ability to construct explanations. Participants included six teachers and 566 students. To test the effect of written scaffolds, we used a quasi-experimental design that included comparison groups with pre- and post-tests. We created two versions of the curriculum, one with context specific scaffolds and one with generic explanation scaffolds, where the scaffolds faded over the unit. We randomly assigned classes of students to either the context-specific or generic treatments so that each teacher taught both groups. Our results identify the effects of the written scaffolds and we offer possible reasons for the findings.
Assessing Beginning Secondary Science Teachers' PCK: Pilot Year Results
Eunmi Lee (NU), Michelle Brown (University of Texas at Austin), and Julie Luft (Arizona State University)
Since the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was introduced, educational researchers have attempted to describe and capture the PCK of teachers. However, accounts of PCK and attempts to measure it have varied greatly. Joining those who are seeking to conceptualize PCK, we have developed a rubric that helps clarify the components and levels of PCK in science teaching practice. The rubric consists of two components, knowledge of students and knowledge of instructional strategies and representations, which emerged from a literature review in the area and interviews with experienced science teachers. In this paper, we describe the process of developing the rubric, along with the PCK data from beginning secondary science teachers.
Defining Pedagogical Content Knowledge from the Perspective of Experienced Secondary Science Teachers
Eunmi Lee (NU) and Julie Luft (Arizona State University)
This study investigates how experienced secondary science teachers, serving as mentors to beginning science teachers, represent PCK. Major data sources include semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, lesson plans, and reflective summaries. A case study method was utilized to conduct an in-depth investigation focusing on how the four experienced secondary science teachers revealed PCK throughout their teaching practices. Grounded theory was employed as the analytic framework for the study. The findings of this study reveal that the experienced teachers' PCK commonly includes knowledge of: (1) science, (2) goals, (3) students, (4) curriculum organization, (5) assessment strategies, (6) teaching strategies, and (7) resources, with specific elements within each component. Based on the interpretation of the data in the study, these seven components were transformed into each teacher's PCK that represented his or her own expertise, which ultimately functioned as a filter to determine his or her instructional decisions and actions. The PCK conceptualization of each teacher varied, depending upon his or her individual background and teaching situation. This study shows that the concept of PCK is not only a unique knowledge required for teaching science, but also the application of that knowledge into teaching practice.
Sequencing and Supporting Complex Scientific Inquiry Practices in Instructional Materials for Middle School Students: Explanation and Argumentation
Katherine McNeill & Joseph Krajcik (UM)
Recent research literature (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000; Duschl, 1990) and reform documents (AAAS, 1990; NRC, 1996) emphasize students constructing evidence-based scientific explanations and engaging in scientific argumentation, in which learners defend, critique, and revise their understandings with their peers. Yet this scientific inquiry practice rarely occurs in classrooms (D. Kuhn, 1993; Newton, Driver, & Osborne 1999). When students do engage in scientific explanation and argumentation, they frequently have difficulty. For example, students struggle to use appropriate evidence (Sandoval, 2003) or provide the backing for why they chose their evidence (Bell & Linn, 2000) and classroom discussions tend to be dominated by claims with little justification (Jiménez-Aleixandre, Rodríguez, & Duschl, 2000). IQWST has designed an instructional framework for scientific explanation that makes explicit the different components–claims, supported by evidence and reasoning (L. Kuhn & Reiser, 2005; McNeill et al., in review). In this paper, we discuss the learning progression we have developed to introduce greater complexity and to help build students’ understanding of scientific explanation and argumentative discourse over the middle school years and science content. For example, in 6th grade we focus on helping students understand what counts as evidence while in the 8th grade we introduce more complex issues such as having students consider counter claims and evidence.
Focus on Modeling: A Curriculum Approach to Learning the Particulate Nature of Matter
Joi Merritt & Aaron Rogat (UM), and Magnia George (Emory University)
Curriculum Use and Adaptation of a Reform-Based Science Curriculum
Kirsten Mawyer (NU)
This paper examines how teachers use Investigations in Environmental Science (IES), a yearlong high school environmental inquiry-based, reform science curriculum. Specifically, it explores the adaptations that teachers make as they enact the curriculum. By focusing on adaptation rather than fidelity to the written curriculum materials, this study recognizes that the systematic modification of curricular materials taking place during enactment is an essential feature of how curricula are used. Three teachers' classroom enactments were examined as they used this reform-based science curriculum. Analysis focused on the general strategies that teachers used to adapt curriculum. Findings suggest patterns to how and when teachers are adapting the curriculum. Furthermore, they indicate a need for the development of an adaptation evaluation tool that will allow researchers to investigate adaptation at a finer granularity.
Development of Middle School Students’ Conception of Energy During a Qualitative Unit in Which Energy is Not Defined
Jeff Nordine (UM), David Fortus (MSU), and Joe Krajcik (UM)
Sequencing and Supporting Complex Science Inquiry Practices in Instructional Materials for Middle School Students: Systems Thinking
Ann Rivet (Teachers College, Columbia University), Kemi Jona & Daniel Edelson (NU)
Enhancing Elementary Teachers’ Capabilities for Critiquing, Modifying, and Enacting Science Curriculum Materials: Empirical Results from the Elementary Teachers and Curriculum Materials Project
Christina Schwarz & Kristin Gunckel (MSU), Mark Enfield (University of North Carolina), Dean Grosshandler, Blakely Tsurusaki, & Ed Smith (MSU)
This paper will present assessments and outcome measures from our efforts to enhance pre-service elementary teachers’ capabilities in critiquing, modifying, and enacting curriculum materials for effective science teaching. We will present some of our assessment methods and results within and across efforts in three methods courses, including those from a written curriculum evaluation and modification instrument and from post-instructional interviews. Analysis of our data indicate that overall, while the pre-service teachers learned how to use the AAAS Project 2061 evaluation criteria in evaluating curriculum materials, they did not integrate use of the criteria into their own practices. Additionally, while we found some uptake of certain frameworks and criteria, we also found some resistance to the notion of critiquing curriculum and to enacting instructional models that did not coincide with their initial views of good science teaching. We will discuss implications of these results for future research and teacher education.
Enhancing Elementary
Teachers’ Capabilities for Critiquing,
Modifying, and Enacting Science Curriculum Materials: Conceptual
Frameworks for the Elementary Teachers and Curriculum Materials Project
Ed Smith, Kristin Gunckel, Christina
Schwarz, & Dean Grosshandler (MSU)
This paper will present the conceptual frameworks for our research into enhancing pre-service elementary teachers’ capabilities in critiquing, modifying, and enacting curriculum materials for effective science teaching. In doing so, we will discuss three teacher educators’ instructional approaches in their sections of a pre-service elementary methods courses in which they used AAAS Project 2061 curriculum evaluation criteria as a lens to help pre-service teachers evaluate and modify materials, while at the same time emphasizing somewhat different aspects of effective science teaching. We will also discuss our theoretical framework for interpreting the empirical results that draws on the notion of pre-service teachers negotiating multiple discourses including the discourses of their own communities, the discourses of science, the discourses of science teaching, and the discourses in the elementary schools. The paper will conclude with a brief discussion of our current work in which we have streamlined our instructional model to incorporate a subset of AAAS Project 2061 criteria.
Describing Teaching Dilemmas That Arise During Inquiry Science Teaching From a Discourse Perspective
Carrie Tzou (NU)
Describing teaching dilemmas that arise during inquiry science teaching from a Discourse perspective.
Learning Progressions in Environmental Literacy: Diversity and Evolution in Environmental Systems
Christopher Wilson (MSU)
Posters
Understanding the Big Ideas: Preparing for Breadth by Going into Depth
David Fortus (MSU)
Curriculum in the Classroom: The Function of Curriculum Materials in Planning & Teaching in a High School Science Course
Kristin L. Gunckel & David Vandenbelt (MSU)
This paper presents the results of a case study that examined how curriculum materials functioned within the sociocultural context of one teacher’s classroom and the teacher’s reflections on his participation in the study. The first part of the study focused on understanding the context of the teachers’ classroom, school, and district and how the teacher used available curriculum materials in his planning and teaching. The second part looked at how the teacher used a set of research-designed, reform curriculum materials and the influence of the sociocultural context on the teacher’s enactment of these materials. Findings reveal that the teacher used curriculum materials to address his goal of motivating his students to learn and at the same time meet the multiple and competing demands placed on his teaching by the students, school, and district. However, a culture of structure, routine, and control that pervaded the classroom, school, and district influenced how the teacher used curriculum materials, ultimately undermining his goals for his students. These results show that the meaning teachers make of curriculum materials and the use that they are ultimately able to make of materials both reflects and shapes the contexts in which the teachers and materials are a part.
Focus on Modeling: A Curriculum Approach to Learning the Particulate Nature of Matter
Joi Merritt (UM)
Enacting Inquiry-Based Curriculum: A Case Study
Yael Shwartz, Ann Novak, and Joe Krajcik (UM)
Measuring the Impact of Informal Science Education in Zoos on Environmental Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors
Christopher Wilson (MSU)
National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) National Conference, Anaheim, CA, April 6-9, 2006
Workshop
Aligning Science Assessment Items to Content Standards
George DeBoer (AAAS)
Student assessments have long served as an indicator of educational success and can be a powerful force in improving curriculum and instruction. Current reform efforts emphasize the importance of aligning assessment items with important learning goals. Developers and users of assessments are continually faced with the challenge of determining whether an assessment item can effectively reveal what students know and are able to do with respect to the content standards. Project 2061 has developed a procedure for examining the alignment of assessment items with the ideas and skills they were written to assess. The procedure is useful to national and state assessment developers, and to curriculum developers and classroom teachers who use test items as a basis for important instructional decisions. In this session we will demonstrate the alignment procedure and provide examples of items that are aligned and not aligned to state and national standards including the NRC’s National Science Education Standards and AAAS’s Benchmarks for Science Literacy.
Aligning Science Assessment Items with Content Standards (given at NSTA Conference on Assessment)
Ted Willard (AAAS)
Current reform efforts emphasize the importance of aligning assessment with content standards. Developers and users of assessment instruments are faced with the challenge of determining whether items effectively reveal what students know and are able to do with respect to content standards. This session introduced an alignment procedure developed by Project 2061 and provides examples of items that are aligned and not aligned to content standards from the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Science Literacy. The procedure is useful to national and state assessment developers and to curriculum developers and classroom teachers who use test items as a basis for important instructional decisions. The procedure focuses on answering the following questions: (1) Is the knowledge or skill specified in the content standard needed to produce a correct response or is there some other way to correctly perform the task? (2) Is the knowledge enough by itself to make a satisfactory response or is other knowledge also needed? (3) Are students likely to understand the task statement, diagrams, and symbols? (4) Could students respond satisfactorily by simply guessing or using other generic test-taking strategies? The session’s audience is teachers, administrators at school and district levels, and professional development providers
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, April 7-11, 2006
Symposia
Structuring Activities to Foster Argumentative Discourse [In symposium organized by Brian Reiser (NU) and Joe Krajcik (UM)]
Leema Kuhn and Brian Reiser (NU)
Approaches and Challenges for Using Clinical Interviews as Instruments for Capturing Coherence in Student Knowledge [Organized by Bruce Sherin (NU), Discussant: Jim Minstrell (Talaria, Inc.)]
- Session 1: Conceptual Dynamics in Clinical Interviews: An Introduction
- ###
- Session 2: Methodological Challenges for Identifying and Coding Diverse Knowledge Elements in Interview Data
- Victor Lee and Moshe Krakowski (NU)
- A superficial viewing of clinical interviews might reveal a straightforward give and take between the interviewer and the student, making it seem as if we could just record what the student is saying and identify that as the student’s knowledge. It turns out, however, to be decidedly difficult to identify what knowledge the students’ have, and how any such knowledge might be revealed in the things that they say in interviews. Indeed rigorous coding of these interviews presents a great many challenges; we would like to be able to code the interviews in a broad enough way to be able to draw larger generalizations from many different students, yet we must at the same time be attentive to the little details that make each interview unique. This tension forces us to make hard choices about how to categorize the different statements students make. A casual listener might hear a student describe the earth’s tilt in one statement and then moments later talk about the slant of the earth. Should these be treated as essentially the same point (the most straightforward interpretation), or is there some subtle difference between the two that may have consequences for the dynamic of the interview? This is the sort of question that we, as researchers, feel that we must grapple with. In this talk, we identify the set of methodological problems visible in some of the illustrative cases of interviews around the causes of the seasons, and will discuss the analytic choices that we made as researchers, in order to best utilize the data. We will conclude with a discussion of how these choices may serve as a template for interview analysis in other rich science content areas.
- Session 3: Modes and Nodes: A Cognitive Framework for Capturing Conceptual Dynamics
- ###
- Session 4: Using Latent Semantic Analysis for Interpreting Clinical Interview Data
- Researchers in education have long been faced with the challenge of developing improved methods for studying students’ understanding of science. Clinical interviews have been regarded by many as a distinctly apt instrument for dealing with this challenge. However, the nature of clinical interviews and the data that they generate result in a unique set of challenges for researchers. The purpose of this symposium is to report on our ongoing efforts to improve our analytic practices in the use of clinical interviews for studying students’ knowledge in science. We further seek to demonstrate that an improved understanding of the dynamics of clinical interviews can help to resolve some of the longstanding debates concerning the nature of intuitive science knowledge.
Characterizing Teachers’ Support of Constructing Scientific Explanations from a Discourse Perspective [In symposium Supporting the Practices of Argumentation and Explanation in Middle School Classrooms]
Organized by Brian Reiser (NU) and Joe Krajcik (UM), Carrie Tzou (NU)
Papers
Sustaining Inquiry: The Uses of an Ecological Metaphor in Examining
Learning in an After-School and Summer Math, Science, and Design Lab
Dean Grosshandler (MSU)
In this study the author uses video data and interviews from twelve years of participant observation in technology-rich learning environments to examine the contradictions and complexities of teaching and learning. The author discusses the use of an analytical framework, the “parts ecology,” that he created to highlight the mediating role of the artifacts in teaching and learning in these environments and to address his bias as co-creator and head teacher of an informal science, math, and design lab for children and student mentors. Drawing on John Dewey’s commentary on children’s art work and his concept of the alembic of library and museum, as well as on sociocultural theory, the author examines how the use of exploratory metaphor may produce significant insights into the values, goals, and processes that sustain learning in both in-school and out-of-school environments.
A Functional Approach to Nature of Science: Using Epistemological Understandings to Construct and Evaluate Explanations
Lisa Kenyon (Wright State University)
Professional Development Design for Systemic Curriculum Change
Beth Kubitskey & Barry Fishman (UM)
Mandates like No Child Left Behind call for increased research on teacher professional development (PD) to assist teachers in implementing inquiry-based curricula to improve student learning. Research over 20 years suggests characteristics of PD that improve its impact on teaching, including the need for long-term PD, proximal to the practice. Research also suggests that teachers privilege what they learn from their practice. Looking at PD not as an instance, but a process, and teachers’ practice not as an outcome, but a component of PD, this paper will examines the question: What impact does PD have on teachers’ learning in the context of practice? The paper concludes with an empirically supported model for PD design.
Hsien-Ta Lin & Barry Fishman (UM)
This study investigates teachers' understanding of underlying curriculum design rationales including: the relationship between lessons and curriculum design principles, and the connections among lessons in a unit. This knowledge is critical to helping teachers enact curricula consistently with designers' intentions. Using sociocultural learning theories as the framework, we investigated: (1) teachers' understanding of curriculum design rationales, and (2) the role of teachers' experiences with curriculum units in their understanding of these rationales. Using clinical interviews, we identified patterns in teachers' understanding. Teachers with more experience with a unit were better able to identify implicit curriculum design rationales. This study helps to inform future curriculum design efforts and also the development of tools to help teachers learn to use curriculum materials.
Supporting Students’ Construction of Scientific Explanation Through Generic Versus Context-Specific Written Scaffolds
Katherine McNeill & Joseph Krajcik (UM)
Does the Scenario Matter? A Study of Student Buy-in to an Overall Scenario in Project-Based Curricula
Virginia Pitts (NU)
NIELS: An Agent-Based Modeling Environment for Learning Electromagnetism
Pratim Sengupta & Uri Wilensky (NU)
The Development of Pre-service Elementary Teachers’ Knowledge about Learners’ Science Ideas
Julie Smithey & Elizabeth A. Davis (UM)
What Makes a Topic Interesting? An Exploration of the Underlying Dimensions of Topic Interest
Su Swarat (NU)
If we are ever to help students develop an enduring interest in the topics taught at school, we need to understand what it is about a topic that makes it interesting (or uninteresting). As a preliminary effort to address this question, a multidimensional scaling (MDS) study was undertaken with the goal of determining the underlying attributes that influence middle school students’ perceived interestingness of school-related (primarily science) topics. The results suggest four salient attribute dimensions: a topic’s activeness, coolness, importance, and familiarity.
Environmental Literacy: Critical for Preparing Responsible Citizens to Live in a Sustainable World
Blakely Tsurusaki & John Lockhart (MSU)
Posters
Moving Beyond Epistemic Fidelity for Evaluating Curricular Representations
Victor R. Lee (NU)
This poster will present an examination of the predisposition to evaluate curricular representations of science content on the basis of its epistemic fidelity alone. Instead, I will suggest that we should reverse the standard approach and can instead evaluate curriculum structure on the basis of representations, and thus consider individual representations only within the context of a designed curriculum and in relation to other representations that are incorporated throughout the materials. I will present examples from published curriculum materials intended for use with middle school students around light and optics. Using these examples, I will introduce and present the beginnings of a construct that I call the semiotic character of a curriculum. I will also consider what the semiotic character of a curriculum may suggest in the way of activity configurations and what learners will experience as curricular content.
Epistemic Structures as Integrated Descriptions of Science Content in Curricula
Jennifer Schwarz-Ballard (Center for Teaching and Learning, Chicago Botanic Garden)
Two converging forces in the current education climate have created a need for new techniques describing the desired learning goals—the content—in science instruction. First, the general atmosphere of accountability with which we are now faced requires a specification of learning goals along with some specification of how we know if those goals are met. Second, researchers have proposed new styles of science instruction, such as "inquiry-oriented" and "project-based." These newmodes of instruction alter not only how instruction works but also what is taught.This poster introduces the Epistemic Structures Framework, one way of capturing and understanding how the content of instruction, the relationship between curricular forms and learning goals, differs across contexts. A case study example of two activities from the Global Warming curriculum (Brown & Edelson, 1998), both of which describe the earth’s energy balance, illustrate howEpistemic Structures can be usefully applied to describe differences in science.It serves both to illustrate the Epistemic Structures analysis process and to make the case that it does in fact describe curriculum content in a way that captures important differences in students’ reasoning in different design contexts. Describing curriculum content in terms of Epistemic Structures provides one way to define what we mean when we talk about “project-based” curricula and to demonstrate its “value added” to educators, administrators, and policymakers.
Primero la Ciencia: Transforming an Urban Science Summer Camp
Jennifer Schwarz-Ballard (Center for Teaching and Learning, Chicago Botanic Garden)
Effective environmental education programs empower learners with the knowledge to recognize important environmental issues, promote a sense of personal and civic responsibility towards the environment, and foster the ability to act on that responsibility (Athman and Monroe, 2002). This paper discusses the challenges and considerations of adapting a previously existing summer science program based at the Chicago Botanic Garden called Science First to an urban, Mexican-American community in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. It focuses particularly on issues that cut across both formal and informal learning environments, including the adaptability of curricula to different contexts and audiences and the ways in which institutional partnerships can reach out to underserved communities to extend science learning beyond classroom walls.
Reopening the Debate: Introducing Social Prescription as the Key to Understanding Informal Learning
Jessica Umphress (NU)
In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework that helps to distinguish between what is informal learning (IL) and what is formal learning (FL). In arguing against the tradition of using context to define types of learning, we present social prescription as a criterion that may help us in this task. Additionally, we use this criterion to specify a series of dimensions that account for the perceived variation across different kinds of learning activities. We hope that this framework will advance the field of IL research into a new era.
6th Annual Leadership Initiative in Science Education of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, PA, April 26-27, 2006
Aligning Science Assessment Items to Content Standards
George DeBoer (AAAS)
Student assessments have long served as an indicator of educational success and can be a powerful force in improving curriculum and instruction. Current reform efforts emphasize the importance of aligning assessment items with important learning goals. Developers and users of assessments are continually faced with the challenge of determining whether an assessment item can effectively reveal what students know and are able to do with respect to the content standards. Project 2061 has developed a procedure for examining the alignment of assessment items with the ideas and skills they were written to assess. The procedure is useful to national and state assessment developers, and to curriculum developers and classroom teachers who use test items as a basis for important instructional decisions. In this session we will demonstrate the alignment procedure and provide examples of items that are aligned and not aligned to state and national standards including the NRC’s National Science Education Standards and AAAS’s Benchmarks for Science Literacy.
7th International Conference on the Learning Sciences (ICLS), Santa Monica, CA, June 27-July 1, 2006
Papers
Carrie Beyer & Elizabeth Davis (UM)
Recording observations and constructing evidence-based explanations are key aspects of inquiry-oriented science teaching and are essential to learning authentic science. However, little is known about the kinds of observations and explanations early elementary school students can make and the ways educative curriculum materials can support students’ and teachers’ learning about these inquiry practices. In this study, we describe the quality of second graders’ drawings and descriptions of their observations and the explanations they construct from their observations during an inquiry-based unit. Our results show that despite some success in making drawings, descriptions, and explanations, children still face many difficulties when engaged in these inquiry tasks. These findings suggest specific areas in which scaffolding for students may be warranted. The findings also point to areas where it may be important to provide additional guidance for teachers. We make recommendations for these student and teacher supports.
The Role of Domain-Specific Knowledge in Promoting Generative Reasoning in Genetics
Ravit Golan Duncan (Rutgers University)
Promoting the ability to reason generatively about novel phenomena and problems students may encounter in their everyday lives is a major goal of science education. This goal proves to be a formidable challenge in domains, such as molecular genetics, for which the accumulated scientific understandings are daunting in both amount and complexity. To develop effective instruction that fosters generative reasoning we need to have a sound understanding of the types of knowledge in the domain that are critical for such reasoning. In this study, I examined the ensemble of knowledge undergraduate students employed in explaining genetic phenomena and solving problems about them. I characterized two key knowledge types: domain-specific heuristics and domain-specific explanatory schemas that are crucial for understanding the dynamics and entities central to molecular genetics phenomena. I then developed a cognitive model that highlights the role of these powerful conceptual understandings in promoting generative reasoning in genetics.
A Role for Professional Development in Sustainability: Linking the Written Curriculum to Enactment
Barry Fishman & Beth Kubitskey (UM)
Learning Sciences researchers have a tradition of developing inquiry-oriented and technology-rich curriculum materials, often in the context of design-based research on learning. But what becomes of the materials developed after the research is completed? A key challenge for the Learning Sciences is to address the issue of sustainability and scalability for the materials we develop. Professional development (PD) can help teachers make adaptations to the written curriculum while maintaining its integrity. We examine empirical data from a study of PD in the context of inquiry-oriented curricular reform to show how PD aligned with written curriculum and informed by enacted curriculum can influence teachers’ practice in ways that are consistent with the goals of the curriculum designers. We conclude with a model for PD design informed both by the written and enacted curriculum to facilitate teacher planning that allows for adaptations that maintain fidelity to the curriculum design.
Changing Conceptual Ecologies with Task-Structured Science Curricula
David Kanter, Bruce Sherin, and Victor Lee (NU)
There is currently a great deal of interest in science curricula in which student learning is organized around a single overarching task. One claim is that this approach can lead to a better understanding of scientific content, where content is understood in its original, narrow sense. As researchers, we would like to know if these claims about student content learning actually hold. Ideally, we would be able to map out completely students' changing conceptual ecologies. However, such work is theoretically and methodologically difficult. To make this task feasible, we propose one potential move: a focus on the recurrent functional patterns of knowledge, which we refer to as modes. Drawing from "mode-sensitive" clinical interviews with middle school students working with the "I, Bio" curriculum, we demonstrate how analysis at the level of modes can capture the landscape of a conceptual ecology, and provide a language for describing the broad sweep of conceptual changes that result from task-structured instruction.
Using Student Epistemologies of Science to Guide the Practice of Argumentation
Lisa Kenyon (Wright State University)
Understanding students’ epistemologies of science has become a primary focus for scientific literacy. We want students to be able to reason about evidence and evaluate knowledge claims. This requires an understanding about the epistemology of science and inquiry practices. In this paper, we propose a functional approach for using students’ epistemologies to guide inquiry practices. In our design, students use a set of criteria that reflects epistemologies of science and guides construction and evaluation of explanations in their scientific investigations. We use argumentation to create a need for students to use this criteria to compare and evaluate one another’s explanations. This study takes place in a 7th grade project-based ecology unit. Our analysis shows that the criteria guides students as they construct and evaluate explanations. During this process, students enhance their epistemologies of science and the quality of their scientific work products.
Fostering Scientific Argumentation by Creating a Need for Students to Attend to Each Other's Claims and Evidence
Leema Kuhn (NU), Lisa Kenyon (Wright State University), and Brian Reiser (NU)
Scientific argumentation can provide students and teachers with opportunities to use evidence to make sense of the phenomena being studied and to engage in central practices of the scientific community. We posit that fostering the practice of argumentation requires transforming classroom interactions in order to create a need for students to attend to each other’s claims and evidence. This paper examines the enactment of a 7th grade ecology unit created to generate this need and support these discussions. Our analyses of the student discussions show students moving beyond typical classroom interactions in order to understand the ways in which their claims differ and to evaluate one another’s claims, in light of the evidence. Thus, we conclude that this approach of creating a need and supporting students as they attend to and critically evaluate one another’s claims and evidence appears to be a promising strategy for fostering scientific argumentation.
Beyond Transparency: How Students Make Representations Meaningful
Victor R. Lee & Bruce Sherin (NU)
In current science education reform, two criteria are considered most critical for determining whether or not an external representation is pedagogically productive. One is whether or not the representation maintains a high level of epistemic fidelity. The other is whether or not the representation is transparent relative to the content it is supposed to represent. We believe that these criteria are too limited in scope and have been considered acceptable in part because we have a very limited understanding of how students construct meaningful interpretations of unfamiliar representations. To remedy that, we propose a new framework for understanding acts of interpretation that focuses on four major constructs: registrations, symbolic forms, interpretive genres, and interpretive maxims. We demonstrate this framework’s utility by applying it to excerpts of middle school students interpreting unfamiliar representations of light reflection.
Exploring the Relationship Between Teachers' Curriculum Enactment Experience and Their Understanding of Underlying Curriculum Design Rationales
Hsien-Ta Lin (UM)
This study investigates teachers' understanding of underlying curriculum design rationales including: the relationship between lessons and curriculum design principles, and the connections among lessons in a unit. This knowledge is critical to helping teachers enact curricula consistently with designers' intentions. Using sociocultural learning theories as the framework, we investigated: (1) teachers' understanding of curriculum design rationales and (2) the role of teachers' experiences with curriculum units in their understanding of these rationales. Using clinical interviews, we identified patterns in teachers' understanding. We found that teachers do not understand design rationales and the relationships between these rationales and lessons well, although more experienced teachers seem to know more than less experienced peers. Teachers do not understand much of the connection among lessons and therefore the overall structure of the unit. This study helps to inform future design of curriculum units, professional development, and tools that help teachers understand curriculum design rationales.
The Role-Goal-Activity Framework Revisited: Examining Student Buy-In in a Project-Based Learning Environment
Virginia Pitts & Daniel Edelson (NU)
Changing Conceptual Ecologies with Task-Structured Science Curricula
Bruce Sherin (NU)
There is currently a great deal of interest in science curricula in which student learning is organized around a single overarching task. One claim is that this approach can lead to a better understanding of scientific content, where content is understood in its original, narrow sense. As researchers, we would like to know if these claims about student content learning actually hold. Ideally, we would be able to map out completely students’ changing conceptual ecologies. However, such work is theoretically and methodologically difficult. To make this task feasible, we propose one potential move: a focus on the recurrent functional patterns of knowledge, which we refer to as modes. Drawing from “mode-sensitive” clinical interviews with middle school students working with the “I, Bio” curriculum, we demonstrate how analysis at the level of modes can capture the landscape of a conceptual ecology and provide a language for describing the broad sweep of conceptual changes that result from task-structured instruction.
Posters
Showing Evidence: Analysis of Students' Arguments in a Range of Settings
Issam Abi-El-Mona and Barbara Hug (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
The purpose of this study is to investigate evidence-based arguments generated through the use of a web-based tool, Showing Evidence. Six of 40 sample classrooms during 2004-2005 were purposefully sampled from the tool's database. Analysis focused on identifying the physical and argumentation schematic structures of possible evidence-based explanations’ using Toulmin (1958) and Walton (1996) frameworks. Initial findings demonstrate student' ability to depict proper data for claims yet inability in structuring overall explanations.
Fostering Generative Reasoning about Complex Phenomena in Genetics
Ravit Golan Duncan (Rutgers University)
The notion of systems is an important idea in science and science education. Genetic phenomena, in particular the mechanisms that link genes to their observable effects, are examples of complicated multileveled systems that students find difficult to understand. Developing generative understanding of the mechanisms underlying genetic phenomena is a critical aspect of scientific literacy in this domain. Here, I describe the design and evaluation of a high school genetics unit aimed at fostering such understandings.
National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Regional Meetings
- Omaha, NE, October 19-21, 2006
- Baltimore, MD, November 2-4, 2006
- Salt Lake City, UT, December 7-9, 2006
Papers
Forward thinking: Backward design
Lou Ellen Finn and Meredith Bruozas (NU)
Making a seamless connection between what you want your students to learn (learning goals), how you want your students to learn (lessons), and knowing if learning occurred (assessment) can be complicated. The general trend in planning curricular units/lessons tends to be starting with lesson design and focusing later on how to assess student understanding. In this session, we will be working backwards and starting with assessments, which focuses your planning on what we want students to learn and how they can demonstrate that learning. We will also explore what it means for students to understand a concept and how this idea of understanding is reflected in daily classroom learning goals and assessment items or activities. We will also discuss the potential misconnections that can happen in the development of curricular units between the lessons and the assessments. We will use multiple curricular examples to illustrate strong and weak connections between learning goals, lessons, and assessment and also discuss strategies you can use when planning. We will be using the theory of backward design to help you develop a forward thinking attitude when planning curricular units.
