Elementary teachers’ use of content knowledge to evaluate students’ thinking in the life sciences

Science learning environments should provide opportunities for students to make sense of and enhance their understanding of disciplinary concepts. Teachers can support students’ sense-making by engaging and responding to their ideas through high-leverage instructional practices such as formative assessment (FA). However, past research has shown that teachers may not understand FA, how to implement it, or have sufficient content knowledge to use it effectively. Few studies have investigated how teachers gather information to evaluate students’ ideas or how content knowledge factors into those decisions, particularly within the life science discipline. We designed a study embedded in a multi-year professional development program that supported elementary teachers’ development of disciplinary knowledge and FA practices within science instruction. Study findings illustrate how elementary teachers’ life science content knowledge influences their evaluation of students’ ideas. Teachers with higher levels of life science content knowledge more effectively evaluated students’ ideas than teachers with lower levels of content knowledge. Teachers with higher content exam scores discussed both content and student understanding to a greater extent, and their analyses of students’ ideas were more scientifically accurate compared to teachers with lower scores. These findings contribute to theory and practice around science teacher education, professional development, and curriculum development.     

中小学教师的工作效能与专业成长

中小学教师的工作效能对于自身的专业成长和学生全面发展至关重要。考察中小学教师的工作效能,需要辨识教育者胜任工作的特征,考察影响其工作效能的多种因素以及评价中小学教师工作效能在实践中的不同模式。中小学教师工作效能的提升具有多层面的途径和策略,包括基于自我效能感的实践反思、基于专业(实践)共同体的同伴互助、基于学习型组织的学校管理变革。     

John Eggleston 1926-2001

In a collaborative classroom, teachers combine their strengths to work together, coach one another, and provide the best possible environment for their students. Similarly, peer coaching provides educators with a chance to utilize a natural support system at their school. When peer coaching is used in conjunction with collaborative teaching, it enhances teacher improvement and student learning by providing ongoing opportunities for educators to share their unique knowledge bases and expertise, allowing exploration of new ideas and expansion of professional skill repertoires.     

Understanding science teaching effectiveness: examining how science-specific and generic instructional practices relate to student achievement in secondary science classrooms

ABSTRACT

In order to create conditions for students’ meaningful and rigorous intellectual engagement in science classrooms, it is critically important to help science teachers learn which strategies and approaches can be used best to develop students’ scientific literacy. Better understanding how science teachers’ instructional practices relate to student achievement can provide teachers with beneficial information about how to best engage their students in meaningful science learning. To address this need, this study examined the instructional practices that 99 secondary biology teachers used in their classrooms and employed regression to determine which instructional practices are predictive of students’ science achievement. Results revealed that the secondary science teachers who had well-managed classroom environments and who provided opportunities for their students to engage in student-directed investigation-related experiences were more likely to have increased student outcomes, as determined by teachers’ value-added measures. These findings suggest that attending to both generic and subject-specific aspects of science teachers’ instructional practice is important for understanding the underlying mechanisms that result in more effective science instruction in secondary classrooms. Implications about the use of these observational measures within teacher evaluation systems are discussed.     

Associations Among Professional Development,Teachers’ Use of Naturalistic Language Strategies,and Preschoolers’ Functional Communication

Research Findings: Naturalistic instruction is the intentional use of strategies embedded within typical activities of the environment to create learning opportunities for children. We used multilevel modeling to analyze data from this single-case design study that focused on improving teachers’ use of naturalistic language strategies and children’s communication through professional development with bug-in-ear coaching. Our results showed that professional development was positively associated with children’s communication during and after professional development. During generalization sessions in different types of activities, teachers’ use of the naturalistic language strategies was positively associated with children’s functional communication. We also found that children were more likely to communicate during child-led activities. Practice or Policy: Associations among professional development, teachers’ use of evidence-based strategies, and children’s outcomes have yet to be fully understood. Administrators and professional development providers should support teachers’ use of naturalistic language strategies to create equitable exposure to language-learning opportunities for all children. Moreover, professional development efforts should support teachers’ intentional use of child-led activities to embed language-learning opportunities based on children’s interests. Finally, to strengthen children’s generalization of skills across routines, professional development providers should identify methods to support teachers’ generalized use of strategies within the typical activities of the setting.     

大学生英语写作错误分析个案研究

如何在学生学习英语的过程中给其更有效的帮助是许多英语教师所不断追求的。对学习者的错误进行系统的分析研究能让教师了解学生所掌握的英语知识以及他们的问题所在。该文选取一个自然班中能代表该班平均水平的一名大学生的英语作文,从本体、文本和语篇三个层面对其错误进行归类,并对错误原因进行分析,发现其在拼写、标点、词汇、语法、连贯和语用方面的问题,进而总结出应从强调英语写作规范、强化学生的语法知识和训练学生的逻辑思维能力等方面改进该班的英语教学。     

Exploring How a Study Abroad and International Service-Learning Project Shaped Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Humanizing Pedagogy

In an attempt to better prepare future teachers to fight against social injustice, support their culturally and linguistically diverse students and wrestle with social and educational complexities around the globe, many education programs have increased the number of study abroad programs and international service learning projects. In this qualitative study, we explored seven preservice teachers’ experiences related to humanizing pedagogy after participating in a study abroad program combined with an international service-learning project in a South African rural community. Analyzing multiple data sources such as interviews and reflective journals, we discovered that the preservice teachers grappled with the political, social, economic, and educational differences they encountered during the international project and wrestled with conflicting ideas and beliefs about poverty and language. They identified their relationships with students as catalysts to address these educational issues and their need to reverse systemic inequities. They built caring relationships with students in the community and developed additive perspectives the focused on the students’ community cultural capital. The preservice teachers expressed deep critical reflection and a desire to promote a more fully human educational world where students have the opportunities to enact their agency, their creativity, and their language and culture.     

Teachers’ implementation of the coaching role: do teachers’ ownership, sensemaking, and agency make a difference?

The aim of this study was to explore whether teachers’ positioning towards an innovation is related to their implementation of it. Positioning was reflected in terms of teachers’ ownership, sensemaking, and agency. The innovation that was of central focus in this study pertained to the changing role of teachers towards a more coaching role in the classroom. Teachers’ implementation of the coaching role was examined through student perceptions. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire, completed by 253 of the students of 10 teachers. The findings showed that these teachers appeared to be implementing their coaching role to a reasonably strong degree. Moreover, a relationship was identified between the extent to which this role was implemented and teachers’ feelings of ownership, their processes of sensemaking, and their experiences of agency. The results therefore suggest that ownership, sensemaking, and agency do make a difference in the implementation of an educational innovation.     

Inquiry identity and science teacher professional development

An effective inquiry-oriented science teacher possesses more than the skills of teaching through investigation. They must address philosophies, and ways of interacting as a member of a group of educators who value and practice science through inquiry. Professional development opportunities can support inquiry identity development, but most often they address teaching practices from limited cognitive perspectives, leaving unexplored the shifts in identity that may accompany teachers along their journey in becoming skilled in inquiry-oriented instruction. In this forum article, we envision Victoria Deneroff’s argument that “professional development could be designed to facilitate reflexive transformation of identity within professional learning environments” (2013, p. 33). Instructional coaching, cogenerative dialogues, and online professional communities are discussed as ways to promote inquiry identity formation and collaboration in ways that empower and deepen science teachers’ conversations related to personal and professional efficacy in the service of improved science teaching and learning.     

Praising and correcting: prospective teachers investigate their teacherly talk

Despite recent calls for teachers to promote and increase students’ communication and discussion in their classrooms, prospective teachers have limited opportunities to explore issues of classroom talk during their teacher preparation programs. In this study, prospective teachers attending a mathematics methods course were encouraged to attend to and investigate their developing teacherly talk through a letter writing exchange with school students. This paper reports on their tendency to respond to the correct answers with praise and to supply the answers when students reached an incorrect result. It explores the ways in which they began to interrogate and problematize such practices and to consider alternative forms of teacher responses to students’ right and wrong answers. Features of the course's field-related experience and the teacher educators’ interventions that promoted and supported the preservice teachers’ investigations are also discussed.     

Evidence of Science and Engineering Practices in Preservice Secondary Science Teachers’ Instructional Planning

There is a current national emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Additionally, many states are transitioning to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which encourage teachers to incorporate engineering in science classrooms as well as have their students learn science by doing science. Methods courses are also shifting to adequately prepare preservice science teachers in these areas. This study examines preservice science teachers’ pre- and post-ideal inquiry-based lesson plan scenarios before and after intervention in their Secondary Science Methods I and II courses. These preservice science teachers participated in a variety of opportunities to practice authentic science inquiry (ASI) pedagogical techniques as well as integrated STEM topics, with a particular emphasis on computer programming throughout their 80 h of Methods instruction. ASI is a type of inquiry where students learn science by conducting science research in a grade-appropriate manner. Thirty-eight preservice teachers’ scenarios were analyzed using a rubric from Spuck (2014) to determine the degree to which the ten components of ASI were included in scenarios pre- to post-instruction. Trends in ASI component inclusion are discussed. These findings indicate that preservice science teachers are proficient at writing inquiry-based lessons where they planned opportunities for their future students to collaborate, use scientific instrumentation, and collect and analyze data, but need additional support with developing student activities where students create testable questions, revise their question and methods, participate in peer review, and disseminate their results to their peers or the larger scientific community. Overall, the results suggest Methods instruction should reinforce preservice teachers’ focus on planning lessons which include opportunities for all ASI components. Interventions in the aforementioned areas of weak inclusion may be beneficial to preservice teachers.     

Teaching with new technology: four ‘early majority’ teachers

This paper explores how four good teachers, who do not have a special interest in technology, meet the challenge of introducing the rapidly developing mathematics analysis software (e.g. spreadsheets, function graphers, symbolic algebra manipulation and dynamic geometry) into their classrooms. These teachers’ practice is viewed through the lens of Roger’s framework for the diffusion of innovation and Pierce and Stacey’s pedagogical opportunities map. Data on teachers, views and practices were collected over 2 years. ‘Pedagogical Maps’ give a picture of the teachers’ perception and uptake of pedagogical opportunities. New practices have been added slowly to each teacher’s repertoire and their increasing fluency in practical ability to teach with the technology resulted in some changes to the classroom didactic contract. Overall, new technology seemed to have been absorbed into current practice, more than changing practice. At this stage of their development, these teachers do not identify the distinctive new mathematical capabilities as contributing to the major relative advantage of the innovation. Instead, they see the relative advantage mostly in the incremental improvements to capabilities of earlier calculators, and meeting the need for students to be up to date. One of the current challenges is that significant changes in both software and hardware design have been happening so rapidly that these early majority teachers felt almost constantly hampered by the need to learn and teach new technical skills and so continue to make limited progress in taking advantage of opportunities to approach mathematics concepts in new ways.     

Preparing teachers for diversity: lessons learned from the US and South Africa

The world's predominant growth populations are largely students of color who have historically struggled for high-quality educational opportunities. Within this context, educational reformers around the globe are challenging teacher preparation programs to prepare teachers to work effectively with students from diverse backgrounds. This article reports on a cross-national study that investigates a program designed to facilitate the development of teachers who are committed to teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students. It presents an analysis of US and South African teachers’ developing discourses that revealed differences in the development of commitment among teachers who engaged in talk-related activities in a teacher education program versus those teachers who engaged in talk-related activities in addition to theory–enacting activities within diverse classrooms. Through the analysis, I explore how teachers’ developing commitment can be facilitated by carefully designed classroom activities and show how those developing commitments are revealed in the teachers’ discourse practices. My intent in presenting this investigation is to help us better understand how applications of activity theory can assist us in addressing the global challenges that face teacher education programs.     

Using information and communication technologies to engage students in the later years of schooling in learning content and literacy: Case studies of three teachers

Literacy for a 21st century context is far more complex than reading and writing print. As society and information and communication technology (ICT) has changed, so what counts as literacy and how a person is deemed to be literate has changed. Students from low socio-economic backgrounds in the later years of schooling require access to multiple literacies mediated through ICT and to teachers who are willing to provide opportunities for them to be taught explicitly. ICT can promote the learning of the content as well as learning the literacies associated with specific subject areas. This paper will focus on how three teachers in the later years of schooling (years 9–12) used technology to enhance learning and engagement of students in learning the literacies associated with their subject. They challenged the hegemony of print literacy by providing opportunities to develop students understanding, critique and creation of multimodal texts, but also supported students in achieving more effective print literacy. These teachers provided appropriate teaching for students from low socio-economic backgrounds, engaging them in thinking, feeling and acting at high levels while simultaneously providing positive messages about their knowledge, ability, control, place and voice. Their pedagogical approach supported the development of cultural and social capital that will enhance their students’ life options.     

Seeing culture and power in mathematical learning: toward a model of equitable instruction

This paper is centered on creating equitable opportunities for learners in mathematics education. Through observations of teacher practice, the paper seeks to theorize how teachers enact their dispositions toward mathematics instruction. These observed propensities, in relation to teachers’ aims for students to “take up their space” in and beyond the mathematics classroom, then inform a model of equitable mathematics instruction. Teachers’ dispositions are considered in relation to Mason’s discipline of noticing and Bourdieu’s notion of the symbolic violence of dominant discourses.     

Improving science teaching practices

A review of research relating to the problem of using research findings to improve classroom practice is presented. There are two aspects to this problem: familiarizing teachers with relevant research and identifying an aspect of teaching that needs to be improved. Research conducted in local settings appears to have most relevance to teachers and is more likely to be accepted by them. Studies indicate that research can have an impact on practice as long as teachers are involved in identification of problems in their class and are provided with a context in which they can learn the strategies to be implemented and understand why they are likely to improve teaching. Teachers need opportunities to practice teaching in peer groups where errors can be made without jeopardizing student learning; receive performance feedback; practice the strategies in their own classes; observe others teach; and discuss teaching with others. Strategy analysis, coaching and peer coaching are techniques which enable most of these criteria to be met and to facilitate science teaching improvement.     

Elementary Science Indoors and Out: Teachers, Time, and Testing

In this article, we present the results from a mixed-methods research study aimed to document indoor and outdoor fifth grade science experiences in one school in the USA in the context of accountability and standardized testing. We used quantitative measures to explore students’ science knowledge, environmental attitudes, and outdoor comfort levels, and via qualitative measures, we examined views on science education and environmental issues from multiple sources, including the school’s principal, teachers, and students. Students’ science knowledge in each of the four objectives specified for grade 5 significantly improved during the school year. Qualitative data collected through interviews and observations found limited impressions of outdoor science. Findings revealed that, despite best intentions and a school culture that supported outdoor learning, it was very difficult in practice for teachers to supplement their classroom science instruction with outdoor activities. They felt constrained by time and heavy content demands and decided that the most efficient way of delivering science instruction was through traditional methods. Researchers discuss potentials and obstacles for the science community to consider in supporting teachers and preparing elementary school teachers to provide students with authentic experiential learning opportunities. We further confront teachers’ and students’ perceptions that science is always best and most efficiently learned inside the classroom through traditional text-driven instruction.     

Veteran teachers’ job satisfaction as a function of personal demands and resources in the relationships with their students

Many teachers experience their profession as stressful, which can have a negative impact on their job satisfaction, and may result in burnout, absenteeism, and leaving the profession. The relationship with students can have both positive and negative implications for the job satisfaction of teachers, both early and later in their careers. The current study focused on the relationship between veteran teachers’ job satisfaction and their aspirations in teacher-student relationships. Data were gathered among 12 Dutch veteran secondary school teachers, including interviews, the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction, and the Questionnaire on Teachers’ Self-Efficacy. Veteran teachers’ job satisfaction appeared to be positively related to the extent to which their aspirations in teacher-student relationships had been realized. Teachers who had failed to realize their aspirations in teacher-student relationships showed relatively low job satisfaction, or avoided feelings of low job satisfaction by reducing the number of tasks that were directly related to teaching students. An implication for coaching veteran teachers is the need to pay more attention to the teacher-student relationship so that they can adhere to the way they would like to teach students.