Tool
Systems to Support Progress toward Expert-Like Teaching by Early Career
Science Educators
Our research group (includes co-PI Dr. Jessica Thompson, Melissa Braaten) has recently received funding from NSF ($1,900,000) for a five-year project to develop and study a system of tools and tool-based practices for early career and pre-service secondary science teachers that support transitions from novice to expert-like pedagogical reasoning and practice. These tools include a learning progression for teaching Model-Based Inquiry, discourse guides for core conversations in classrooms, rapid assessment models to tap student thinking, and rubrics to evaluate students' abilities to construct evidence-based explanations in science. Our proposed system of tools will serve as a model for making pre-service teacher training and induction clearly focused on student learning. This system of tools is designed to be responsive to all students in the classroom. Runs from 2008-2013.
Teachers' Learning Trajectories Project (TLT): Currently our research group (with Jessica Thompson and Melissa Braaten) is conducting a longitudinal study, funded by Carnegie, of how novice teachers develop pedagogical reasoning around sophisticated forms of inquiry for seconday students. We are tracing our participants' development across four contexts: their teacher education coursework, student teaching, sessions of analysis of their pupils' work, and their early years of professional work.
Noyce Teaching Scholars. This National Science Foundation project capitalizes on a recently introduced revision of the University of Washington's teacher preparation program, "Teachers for New Era", and benefits from existing collaborations among science and mathematics departments in the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and of Education, and three of the largest school districts in Washington: Seattle, Highline, and Renton. Thirty-six scholarships are being awarded, 9 each year over 4 years, balanced between mathematics and science majors. Awardees participate in systematic induction activities over the first two years of professional service.
Other previous work
Teacher
Knowledge Required for Inquiry
Other recent work includes a paper commissioned by the National
Academy of Sciences. A special committee has been formed to help re-conceptualize
the role of laboratory work at the high school level, and they asked me
to summarize the research on the knowledge required by teachers to support
various forms of inquiry. The title of the paper is: “What types
of knowledge do teachers use to engage learners in doing science? Rethinking
the continuum of preparation and professional development for secondary
science educators.” The National Academy holds the copyright, but
will release it within a few months. I will make it available here at
that time. The final report is shown in book form below.
Science Teacher Education: How Pre-service Teachers Understand
and Enact Scientific Practices
My most extended line of research involves how pre-service teachers conceptualize
and enact canonical scientific practices (posing questions, theorizing,
designing investigations, constructing arguments). All four of these studies
have used, as their central feature, an authentic empirical investigation
that various groups of pre-service teachers have conducted. I have examined
how these individuals think about, talk about, and execute their investigations.
In the first three studies I have also collected data from their student
teaching to see if and how they incorporate inquiry into their instruction.
Data sources for these studies typically include participant journals,
interviews, video of participants’ presentations and final arguments,
field observations in classrooms.
This work is important for three reasons. One is that the documentation
of participants’ thinking tells us a lot about the outcomes of an
American science education, all the way through an undergraduate degree.
The second reason is that it tells us how prepared our pre-service teachers
are to mentor their own students through scientific investigations. And
finally, it gives us an indication of how purposefully designed interventions
within contexts like methods classes can advance the thinking of our future
science teachers.
The first of these was published in 2002 in Science Education: “What
can investigative experiences reveal about teacher thinking and eventual
classroom practice?” The second appeared in the Proceedings of the
International Conference of the Learning Sciences, 2002: “The reproduction
of cultural models of inquiry by pre-service teachers: An examination
of thought and action.” The third piece, which was published by
the Journal of Research in Science Teaching in 2004 is called: “Caught
in the cycle of reproducing folk theories of “Inquiry”: How
pre-service teachers continue the discourse and practices of an atheoretical
scientific method.” A fourth article in this series, “Generating
Scientific Models To Ground Authentic Investigations: How Do Beginning
Secondary Teachers Reason About and Enact Canonical Science Practices?”
has been submitted for review.
Bioethics Study
With collaborators in the School of Nursing, I am engaged in a study entitled
“Collaboration to Enhance Understanding of Science and Ethics.”
This is an NIH-funded effort to systematically integrate a discourse of
ethics into K-12 biology classrooms. This study is on-going. http://www.wabr.org/about/pressrelease/pressrelease.htm
Teachers Doing Cutting-Edge Research With Scientists
I am senior researcher on the NSF-funded REVEL Project (2003-2006). The
REVEL Project (http://www.ocean.washington.edu/outreach/revel/)
offers science teachers from grades 6-12 an exceptional opportunity to
study the physical, geological, chemical and biological processes that
run plate tectonics underneath the ocean. Selected teachers participate
in sea-going cruises and collaborate with scientists studying a multitude
of aspects of mid-ocean ridges volcanism, tectonism and hydrothermalism
along mid-oceanic ridges.
Through the REVEL Project, teachers are immersed in the scientific process
as they explore the seafloor of the Juan de Fuca Plate in the Northeast
Pacific Ocean. Teachers participate in sea-going field research alongside
scientists and in complementary professional development opportunities
that help teachers increase their content knowledge, and enhance their
teaching skills. Members of a network of researchers and education colleagues
passionate about earth and ocean sciences, REVEL teachers transfer their
experience to the classroom and many colleagues.
Redefining Authentic Forms of Inquiry for School Science
Most state tests in science define inquiry as simple comparisons using
randomized control group experimental design. Modern science, however,
uses many forms of inquiry that do not conform to this limited vision.
I have been working recently with the Pacific Education Institute, with
teachers, teacher educators and local scientists to help re-conceptualize
a range of different types of investigations and to create templates for
teachers that will allow them to design and assess student work in this
area. The white paper we developed is: “Field Investigations in
School Science--Aligning Standards for Inquiry with the Practices of Contemporary
Science.”
What Reform Teaching Requires of Educators
Visitors to this site may be interested in an opinion piece I wrote last
year for the Seattle Times—“Transforming The Way Science Is
Taught.” In it I outlined the kinds of skills required by our state’s
science teachers to do reform teaching and to help our kids achieve at
high levels. I received an interesting group of responses from local citizens!
