The goal of this project is to use educative curricula materials to help transform teacher learning and practices and improve student outcomes in science. The PI investigates adding overlays to the Science, Technology, and Children (STC) curricula materials, developed by the Smithsonian Institution, as one way to increase the use of inquiry-based methods by elementary teachers. The educative overlays provide teachers with additional supports to address specific science content. These supports include subject matter content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, sample lessons, and other instructional supplements. Fifty teachers and 1000 elementary students will benefit directly from this effort. The project targets units on ecosystems and electric circuits.
The study will focus on the following: How does teacher use of educative curricula relate to (a) how a teacher learns; (b) how a teacher practice what is learned (and thus how a teacher increases opportunities for students to learn); and (c) how a student learns science content and about scientific practices across scientific disciplines?
The PI will use a quasi-experimental design and an observational study to compare the learning and practice of the teachers to the learning of students when teachers are supported with educative curricula materials and when they are not. The PI intends to draw on a range of data sources (e.g., classroom observations, interviews, and teacher and student assessments and artifacts) to capture the impact of the educative overlays. Content analysis will also be used to generate thematic content maps in the analysis of qualitative data while hierarchical linear modeling and repeated measures (ANOVA) will be used to compute quantitative analyses.
The intended outcomes of this project includes better ways to teach inquiry at the elementary level; educative overlays in both expository and narrative forms; improved theoretical knowledge of teacher learning; an empirical trace of connections among opportunities for teachers to learn, their knowledge, their practice, and the outcomes of their students.
The ELECTS project focused on research and design of educative curriculum materials, or curriculum materials that are intended to support teacher learning as well as student learning. The project focused specifically on supporting the learning of upper elementary science teachers using NSF-funded, commercially-available kit-based curriculum materials, which we enhanced using a systematically-designed set of educative features. A large-scale study comparing two conditions, one with teachers who used the enhanced curriculum materials with the educative features and one with teachers who used the original curriculum materials, was complemented by a series of close observational studies of teachers and students. The project contributes novel and nuanced findings about the effects of educative curriculum materials. Students' pre- and post-test scores on a content assessment indicated that students in both conditions made significant improvements from pre- to post. Furthermore, teachers' enactments and students' work show evidence of teachers from the treatment condition having taken up ideas and language provided in the educative features. That said, teacher and student scores on science content assessments did not show differences across conditions. On the other hand, students whose teachers used the enhanced curriculum materials made significantly greater gains on items related to science practice—the doing of science, emphasized in current science education reforms—than did students whose teachers used the original curriculum materials. The project found variation in how the teachers used different kinds of educative features (and in how they valued them). For example, teachers tended to highly value educative features that were perceived to have a "personal touch", such as the narrative descriptions of how a lesson might be adapted or rubrics with suggested teacher comments for student work. We hypothesize that the high degree of variation in teachers' use of the specific educative features helps to account for the lack of statistically significant differences between the two conditions in terms of teacher and student content assessment scores. Teachers who drew on educative features generally showed more ambitious and reform-oriented instruction. For example, teachers who used the educative features that foregrounded science content tended to use more accurate scientific language than teachers who did not use these educative features. Their students' work generally reflected this higher-quality instruction, as well. Most of the teachers participating in our project were using investigations in their science teaching for the first time, and found doing so to be very challenging. We hypothesize that this may have influenced their use of the curriculum materials (including the educative features). The project contributes to broader impact primarily by informing how curriculum developers can incorporate educative features into curriculum materials. We found that the educative features we designed were most successful at supporting three scientific practices: making and recording scientific observations, justifying predictions, and planning investigations. Thus, we see evidence that these science practices are accessible for elementary teachers, and that educative features can promote their use. Our educative features were also successful at supporting the teaching of accurate science content and the use of accurate and accessible scientific language. Across our studies, our educative features were less successful at supporting teachers in engaging students in (a) the scientific practice of constructing evidence-based explanations and (b) rich conceptual discussions about text. For these two highly challenging areas, it is possible that educative features must be complemented with strong and sustained face-to-face professional development, to promote changes in teachers' practice. Empirically, our work suggests at least three avenues for designing educative features most likely to be used and useful for teachers. First, curriculum designers should provide multiple examples of student work, with guidance about how teachers might grade and provide feedback on it. Such examples appeared to be powerful for the teachers in our studies. Second, curriculum materials should include rationales for engaging in scientific practices that teachers can provide for students. Without such rationales, teachers infrequently helped students understand why they were doing what they were doing. Third, our work suggests the power of narrative descriptions of how lessons may be adapted, using the rhetorical device of a fictional teacher threaded through the narratives presented in a unit. Teachers seemed to find such narratives to be confidence-building and helpful. We implemented a design process that was both theoretically- and empirically-driven. As curriculum developers design educative features, we recommend drawing on (a) empirical data about teachers' use of curriculum materials and (b) conceptual knowledge about supporting teacher and student learning. This will support determining what educative features are likely to be needed and where they might best be positioned in the curriculum materials. In sum, the ELECTS project contributes to the field's understandings of how teachers use educative curriculum materials and knowledge about designing such materials. These contributions should lead to improved support for teachers in engaging their students in the reforms called for in K-12 science education.
