The project's goals are to (1) devise learning progressions for students and teachers in scientific inquiry and its facilitation, with respect to energy, and (2) develop model materials and strategies for grades 4-5 curriculum and teacher professional development. The research questions are:
*What constitutes a learning progression in inquiry that builds toward a conceptual understanding of energy? And how can instruction help?
*What constitutes teachers' progression in their abilities to facilitate scientific inquiry? What scaffolding, instructional activities, and professional development activities support teachers' movement along this progression?
The work is conducted by research teams from San Diego State University and the University of Maryland. Energy will be treated through concepts in the physical sciences in grade 4, the life sciences in grade 5 and earth science in grade 6.
The research will focus on coding students' reasoning about energy concepts by identifying levels of sophistication in argumentation and on their progress in conceptual understanding of energy. The project studies teacher learning through analysis of video data from the professional development sessions, and the degree to which teachers modify instructional practice along with their assessment practices.
Learning Progressions for Scientific Inquiry Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact This project examined teachers’ and students’ progress in inquiry within a responsive teaching environment. Outcomes address an important nationally recognized need in science education to integrate the learning of scientific content with the practices of science as called for in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This was achieved through supporting 13 elementary teachers in responsive teaching, and studying the impact of the extensive professional development on the teachers’ practice and on the students’ engagement in scientific inquiry. In responsive teaching teachers notice, interpret and respond to students’ ideas as they arise during instruction. Teachers listen for what their students are actually saying rather than selectively listening for only correct answers, and through the practices of science build from students’ ideas toward scientific content. On a day-by-day basis the flow of classroom activity emerges from students’ thinking, a flow that makes sense to the student. Teachers’ in-the-moment decisions over the course of an entire unit lead the class to achievement of content and inquiry expectations, in contrast to a traditional approach in which students participate in preplanned lessons and experience a flow of thought that makes sense to the curriculum designer. Because students’ ideas are respected and become a key driving force in classroom activity, responsive teaching provides a nourishing environment inclusive of learners along diverse dimensions such as gender, language, culture, and ability. Project outcomes include 11 papers published in journals, 50 presentations at conferences, 4 book chapters, 2 doctoral dissertations, and an extensive prototype website. These outcomes are already spawning new research, networks, partnerships and classroom implementations. For example, several science educators across the country are using the project website to provide professional development to prospective and practicing K-12 teachers, and to do research on how the website helps their students become responsive teachers. Description of Project Outcomes involving Research and Development The major research outcome of the project is a set of studies related to responsive teaching and its impact on both teachers and students. These studies included: (1) studying how students naturally seek coherence in their everyday and scientific explanation of phenomena; (2) studying the dynamic interactions among students and teacher in a responsive teaching environment; (3) developing and applying a new construct to describe how teachers respond to students’ ideas as a way of analyzing teachers’ actions when they are engaged in responsive teaching; and (4) developing the notions of disciplinary affect and motivation as a framework for thinking about tendencies that move students towards taking initiative during learning. Promoting students’ agency is an important goal of responsive teaching. The major development outcome of the project is the prototypical website mentioned above, http://plrg.sdsu.edu/ResponsiveTeaching. The website uses extensive video from teacher meetings and classrooms. The site presents a discussion of responsive teaching along with references for further reading, annotated video examples of responsive teaching in a variety of classrooms exploring different topics, professional development support for teachers who want to try teaching responsively in their own classrooms, and some illustrations of responsive teaching toward the Next Generation Science Standards. Video from 13 teachers is included in the website. See figure of website home page. The website provides numerous trajectories of actual responsive teaching implementations. While each teacher started the same unit with the same activity, the trajectory of a classroom’s exploration emerged from students’ ideas and the next move decisions each teacher made. The figures show example trajectories from two units, one from third grade on Toy Cars and one from fifth grade on the Water Cycle. The thick arrows connecting the circles in the diagram showed the sequence of major ideas or activities during the implementation. Each circle links to a summary of what happened in the class, classroom video, comments about students’ ideas and reasoning, and the rationale for the teacher’s decision-making. The website provides curricular support for three units: Toy Cars, Water Cycle, and Electric Circuits. Responsive teaching places different demands on teachers relative to other instructional approaches, thus one area of the website addresses professional development. Subsections address how to view and discuss video, how to identify student ideas, small video case studies, an extended video case study of an entire Water Cycle implementation, and studies of teacher discussions that occurred during the project (see figure). The studies include questions for users to ponder, along with suggestions for follow-up discussion. Although the work on this project was nearly completed before the release of the NGSS, engaging in scientific practices as called for in the NGSS is the backbone of responsive teaching, and in developing scientific ideas students naturally encounter crosscutting concepts in science. We identified some examples of responsive teaching toward NGSS expectations. An area of the website highlights these examples with annotated video case studies.
