Curriculum & Instruction

In 2010, Principal Kirk introduced Small Group Meeting (SGM) at Hillcrest Elementary. SGMs are multiage student groupings who meet with school faculty once a month to work on community building, service-learning projects, and advising. Many teachers liked the SGMs, some felt they needed more time to prepare, and others felt it was a waste of time. The case raises the questions: How can school leaders facilitate teacher autonomy and help push the learning community toward a common vision? If a leader has a strong vision, will teachers’ voices always be stifled? When introducing new initiatives like SGMs, what is the best pace to proceed? The case targets graduate classes in educational leadership and administration as well as professional development of leaders of different educational settings.

This case study opens up space for educators and scholars to learn from six black and Latino/a youth (ages 12-13) who attend Septima Clark K-8, an urban public school in the eastern United States. It describes youth political narratives that counter, fracture, construct, and/or reconstruct the narratives of scholars, politicians, and educators that position black and Latino/a youth as politically disengaged, apathetic, and unknowledgeable and within the discourse of neoliberal school reform. The study is guided by three inquiries: What are the political experiences and activities of black and Latino/a youth who attend Septima Clark Pilot School in Oakton? How do these youth construct political narratives based on their daily experiences and activities? How can these narratives inform epistemological assumptions and pedagogical approaches to teaching social studies and civics to urban black and Latino/a youth? Conducted over ten months, this study used methods of inquiry including focus group interviews, individual interviews, participant observation, and artifact and document collection. Informed by grounded theory, the study offers three overarching political narratives for analysis: (1) Youth as "powerless" within the systems punishment, control, conformity, and injustice that situate them; (2) Youth as imaginative political actors who resist systems of injustice and deficit positioning through identity performance, talking back, acting back, and sneaky resistance; and (3) Youth as political imaginers who hope for a politics of mutuality and authenticity. Ultimately, this case study raises the question: What might it mean to position urban black and Latino/a youth as competent, imaginative, political actors? v Artifact and Document Collection.

This case study opens up space for educators and scholars to learn from six black and Latino/a youth (ages 12-13) who attend Septima Clark K-8, an urban public school in the eastern United States. It describes youth political narratives that counter, fracture, construct, and/or reconstruct the narratives of scholars, politicians, and educators that position black and Latino/a youth as politically disengaged, apathetic, and unknowledgeable and within the discourse of neoliberal school reform. The study is guided by three inquiries: What are the political experiences and activities of black and Latino/a youth who attend Septima Clark Pilot School in Oakton? How do these youth construct political narratives based on their daily experiences and activities? How can these narratives inform epistemological assumptions and pedagogical approaches to teaching social studies and civics to urban black and Latino/a youth? Conducted over ten months, this study used methods of inquiry including focus group interviews, individual interviews, participant observation, and artifact and document collection. Informed by grounded theory, the study offers three overarching political narratives for analysis: (1) Youth as "powerless" within the systems punishment, control, conformity, and injustice that situate them; (2) Youth as imaginative political actors who resist systems of injustice and deficit positioning through identity performance, talking back, acting back, and sneaky resistance; and (3) Youth as political imaginers who hope for a politics of mutuality and authenticity. Ultimately, this case study raises the question: What might it mean to position urban black and Latino/a youth as competent, imaginative, political actors? v Artifact and Document Collection.

Plate tectonics is the organizing paradigm of geosciences, but it is also conceptually complex, and students often struggle with developing a system level understanding of the earth. This article reports on research designed to create a characterization of the different levels of sophistication around plate tectonics in the form of a learning progression for middle grades (grades 6-9). A learning progression is an educational research construct that can guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction by creating a description not just of students' misunderstandings but of a sequential pattern of increasingly sophisticated and productive student conceptions. This article reports on research findings from a 7-year National Science Foundation-funded project focused on the teaching and learning of earth and space science, which engaged in hundreds of conceptual interviews with students in diverse contexts across the state of Pennsylvania. This article focuses on the implications for higher education faculty in geosciences with regard to the preparation of students, the likely alternative conceptions they may hold, and hence instructional approaches to help their ideas mature toward a normative scientific understanding.

Informal science educators' (ISEs) work with young children has received limited attention in the literature. We investigated ISEs' goals for preschool-aged audiences (3-to 5-year-old children), methods they describe for achieving these goals, and how ISEs understand young children as doing science in their venues. We interviewed 35 ISEs working at informal science venues across the USA. Using thematic analysis, we generated codes and categories through iterative analysis of the interview data set. Our findings suggest ISEs most often described affective goals, conceptual learning goals, and a goal of increasing young children's awareness of nature and their world. ISEs frequently mentioned hands-on or active educational methods, creative experiences, and memorable experiences as ways they achieve their goals. Though science practices were rarely described as a goal for their preschool-aged audiences, ISEs believe young children are capable of participating in the practices of science and frequently described ways they provide opportunities for young children to participate in science practices, such as asking questions and collecting data. Our findings suggest a starting point for the field to understand how ISEs are working with and thinking about preschool-aged audiences, providing leverages for future professional development to support and strengthen ISEs' professional practice in engaging this audience in doing science.

Switching from face-to-face learning to mandatory online education during the coronavirus pandemic brought much uncertainty and new experiences for undergraduate students who were unfamiliar with that type of learning. This research aimed to identify perceptions and experiences of preservice [PST] teachers about taking science courses online in the teacher education programs during the Covid-19 lockdown. 180 PSTs voluntarily participated in this study from three public universities located in different regions of Turkey. These PSTs enrolled in seven different science and science education courses, including

In this study, we examined how learners developed scientific explanations about light with the assistance of various technology-based scaffolds. The study emphasis was on scaffolding processes of reflection and articulation. We used a content-neutral software program (Progress Portfolio) to create the instructional scaffolds. A qualitative research design was used to investigate two pairs of prospective teachers in a science content course in engineering. Our findings suggested that the computer-based scaffolds used in our study were useful to support articulation, reflection, and revision of explanations, when certain conditions were met. A major theme of our findings relates to interacting effects among learner characteristics, teacher coaching, software scaffolding design, and task characteristics.

In this qualitative case study, preservice science teachers (PSTs) enrolled in their advanced methods course participated in a complex, data-rich investigation based on an adapted version of the Struggle for Survival curriculum. Fundamental to the investigation was the use of the Galapagos Finches software and an emphasis on giving priority to evidence and constructing evidence-based arguments. The questions that guided the research were: (1) What is the nature of the scientific arguments developed by PSTs? (2) How do PSTs go about constructing scientific arguments (emphasis on processes and strategies)? In what ways do the scaffolds embedded in the Galapagos Finches software influence the development of PSTs arguments? Two pairs of PSTs were selected for in-depth examination. The primary sources of data were the electronic artifacts generated in the Galapagos Finches software environment and the videotaped interactions of both pairs as they investigated the data set, constructed and revised their arguments, engaged in peer review sessions, and presented their arguments to the class at the end of the unit. Four major patterns emerged through analysis of the data. First, using the software, PSTs consistently constructed claims that were linked to evidence from the investigation. Second, although PSTs consistently grounded their arguments in evidence, they still exhibited a number of limitations reported in the literature. Third, the software served as a powerful vehicle for revealing PSTs knowledge of evolution and natural selection. Finally, the PSTs approach to the task had a strong influence on the way they used the software.

This qualitative case study examined web-based portfolio development in the service of supporting reflective thinking and learning within the innovative context of Professional Development Schools. Specifically, this study investigated the nature of the evidence-based philosophies developed by prospective teachers as the central part of the web-based portfolio task and the ways in which the technology contributed to it. The findings of this study illuminated the participants' understandings about learning and teaching science emphasizing a student-centered approach, connecting physical engagement of children with conceptual aspects of learning, becoming attentive to what teachers can do to support children's learning and focusing on teaching science as inquiry. The way the task was organized and the fact that the web-based format provided the possibility to keep multiple versions of their philosophies gave prospective teachers the advantage to view how their philosophies were changing over time, which supported a continuous engagement in metacognition, self-reflection, and self-evaluation. Built on these findings we suggest that future research be directed in the area of teachers' knowledge and beliefs about science teaching and learning and the kinds of experiences that influence their development. The ways in which technology tools *

New views of proficiency in K-8 science that highlight the importance of engaging children in the discourses and practices of science have raised the stakes for elementary teachers and the teacher educators who prepare them. In this paper, a framework for teaching science as argument is presented. The framework is advanced as a means of addressing problems of practices faced by preservice teachers, creating coherence for the design of teacher education experiences, and serving as a tool for shaping a design-based research agenda. Findings of three research studies that examined preservice teachers' developing understandings and practices for teaching science as argument and the ways in which teacher education experiences mediated learning are synthesized. Across the studies, findings suggest that the framework serves as a powerful scaffold for preservice teachers' developing thinking and practice. More specifically, early attention to evidence and argument can leverage other important aspects of effective science teaching, such as attention to classroom discourse and the role of the teacher in monitoring and assessing children's thinking. In closing, a case is made for coherence among science learning opportunities, learning to teach science experiences, and field experiences.

Portfolios have been used in teacher education in different formats, in a variety of ways and for different purposes. Portfolios can be used as evaluation tools, to illustrate good teaching, to demonstrate progress, to integrate collection of work, to share work, and to support reflection and ...

To have science learners engage in "science as argumentation" has become one of the most important goals of reform-oriented science education in the US. However, one of the major barriers to accomplish this goal has been that K-12 teachers frequently are not prepared to guide their students through that process. This paper describes a science course (Technology Tools for Supporting Scientific Inquiry, SCIED 410) designed to support prospective teachers (PTs) development toward this goal. The course was conceptualized with current understandings about learning and US reform goals for science education in mind. In SCIED 410, PTs engaged as science learners in three long-term problem-based science investigations. They built evidence-based arguments as they continuously interacted with their peers. These activities were supported with the use of specially designed technology tools. PTs were also asked to reflect on their experiences, focusing on various aspects of the course, such as understandings about teaching and learning science, the nature of science, the use of technology in science learning, and their developing subject matter knowledge. We argue that this course is not merely a setting in which we apply our current knowledge about science/teacher learning, but that it also serves as a context for empirical research that has the potential to inform our understanding of the processes involved in scientific knowledge construction within the context of school and, in particular, by future teachers.

Citation for published version (APA): Adams, J., Avraamidou, L., Bayram-Jacobs, D., Boujaoude, S., Bryan, L., Christodoulou, A., Couso, D., Danielsson, A., Dillon, J., Erduran, S., Evagorou, M., Goedhart, M., Kang, N-H., Kaya, E., Kayumova, S., Larsson, J., Martin, S., Martinez Chico, M., Marzabal, A., ... Zembal-Saul, C. (2018). The role of science education in a changing world. NIAS Lorentz center. https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/2018/960/extra.php3?wsid=960&venue=Snellius

Enhancing science instruction in the elementary schools Walk into an elementary school classroom and watch the excitement of children learning science. Contrast this experience with that of a physics professor standing in front of a sea of first-year students in an introductory college physics course. The first group of students is often enthusiastic about the subject matter and cares about what the teacher is saying. In contrast, the second group consists mostly of students trying to expend the minimum effort needed to achieve the maximum possible grade. The college students are often frustrated by the work required and resentful of teachers who do not recognize that a high grade is their principal goal. What causes the enthusiasm of the first group to dwindle? Is this change an inevitable consequence of adolescence? Is it a result of bad teaching? Has this loss of interest been present at all times and places, or is it a recent phenomenon that mainly occurs at big state colleges and universities? Is it exacerbated by grade inflation and/or over-emphasis on grades? Is the problem an ironic consequence of society's concern about quality teaching, leading to student evaluations and "performance standards," which have had counterproductive effects (pandering, grade inflation, teaching-to-the-test)? Is it worse for physics, or science in general, than other disciplines? These are difficult questions that lack simple answers. Problems with student interest and achievement in American science education have been recognized for a long time. One of us (Cole) was in high school when Sputnik was launched, precipitating hand-wringing concern about U.S. science education, which resulted in some changes in the science curriculum and support. Subsequently, these problems have not gone away. For example, recent U.S. student performance in international mathematics and science competitions has been disappointing. The most recent (1999) TIMSS-R comparative study of eighth grade students' understanding of math and science found that the average performance of students in the U.S. is below the average of students in the 23 countries participating in this assessment. 1 The overall performance of U.S. students was below that of students from two similar immigrant countries, Australia and Canada, but about the same as students in Great Britain. Most importantly, our students' average performance on these science and mathematics exams declines (relative to students elsewhere) with grade level. To deal with this problem is a serious concern. A National Academy of Sciences report 2 affirms that "The challenge [to improve science education] extends to everyone within the system. Efforts will be time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes uncomfortable. They will also be exhilarating and deeply rewarding. There is no more important task before us as a nation." In particular, this report encourages "… scientists and engineers to work with school personnel to initiate and sustain the improvement of school science programs." 3 What can we, as individuals, do? In the following, we discuss some recent collaborative activities undertaken by the two of us, a physicist and a science teacher educator, aimed at enhancing elementary school science teaching and learning. These activities exemplify the kinds of projects that might be useful when synergistic working relationships are established. 4 Our work is an extension of an ongoing partnership between Penn State University and the State College Area School District. 5 Our collaboration, which we nicknamed the "flight team," consists of two elementary teachers, a curriculum support teacher, a volunteer pilot from US Airways, and the two of us. Our goal is to enhance the Air and Aviation unit, which is part of the 3rd and 4th grade curriculum in our local schools. We met regularly during the spring of 2001 and engaged in extensive discussions, aimed at clarifying concepts involved in flight and crafting opportunities for children to participate in elements of scientific inquiry. The emphasis on meaningful science learning and scientific inquiry is fundamental to contemporary reform efforts in science education. 6 Our discussions were a learning experience for all of us. The emphasis on flight concepts fit well with our focus on teaching science as inquiry. Given that the physical principles governing our world are often counterintuitive, thinking about them raises interesting, testable

This study invited small groups to make several arguments by analogy about simple machines. Groups were first provided training on analogical (structure) mapping and were then invited to use analogical mapping as a scaffold to make arguments. In making these arguments, groups were asked to consider three simple machines: two machines that they had built, used, and made measurements with and one that they had not yet studied. Finally, groups were to produce an argument in favor of the machine that worked most like another machine. Seven of these approximately 50-minute analogical-mapping-based comparison activities were given to 55 preservice elementary teachers working in 15 small groups over 7 weeks. When used as a scaffold for argumentation in small groups, these activities were found to generate a need for discernment, which allowed for simple machines and their parts to be understood in and connected to the context.

Abstract: The 2009 Professional Development Schools National Conference recognized the professional development school partnership between Pennsylvania State University and State College Area School District for its meritorious partnership work over time and so ...