Adapting a Nascent Science and Data Journalism Model to Diverse Educational Contexts Over Time

• In Event: 70.057 - Prospects and Challenges in Teacher Curricular Adaptation Across Disciplines

Abstract

Purpose
Our purpose is to describe how particular teachers in diverse learning environments have adapted a curricular model for involving adolescents in the authoring of science news stories (science journalism) and infographics (data journalism) for authentic publication. We focus on adaptations that teachers have made to fit their particular purposes and contexts, in a distributed reform effort with varying degrees and qualities of interaction between university-based researchers and school-based educators who collaboratively developed the model and curricular materials.

Perspective
We take a sociocultural perspective on human action and learning, using the notions of mediated action (Wertsch, 1998) and ideas from practice theory (Lave & Wenger, 1990). We consider the distributed set of school, out-of-school, and university sites implementing some version of the youth journalism curricular model to be a "sociotechnical system" (Fischer, 2013) with persons using cultural tools to carry out and mediate educational activities. This sociotechnical system has loose couplings across sites, and richer interactions at the local site level. Tools of importance for this distributed system are the publication venue with a rigorous editorial process (SciJourner.org), and the set of guidelines for science journalism in education collaboratively developed over the first few years of the project. The curricular materials are encapsulated in the book Front-Page Science: Engaging Teens in Science Literacy (Saul, Kohnen, Newman, & Pearce, 2012) and a website.

Methods
Our method is case study based on reanalysis of data from several design-based and descriptive studies. The primary data sources are interviews, supplemented by observational notes from professional development meetings and teacher artifacts (lesson plans, handouts), taken from multiple studies from 2009 through 2014. We examine the process of adaptation by focal educators at eight school sites in the Midwestern United States: 4 chemistry teachers, 1 biology/chemistry teacher and 1 physical science teacher at the high school level; and 2 middle school science teachers. The teachers were deliberately selected to vary on several dimensions:
• ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity
• when they began in the project (2009- 2011)
• curricular resources and professional development interactions available to them
• implementation strategies employed.

Results
Our results show that the project's aim of preparing students for using science in life after graduation from school provided a key orientation for teachers' adaptations (Polman, Newman, Saul, & Farrar, in press). The principle-based aspect of the project's "guidelines" left room for significant adaptation for different contextual circumstances and local purposes by all teachers (Kirshner & Polman, 2013). Teachers who became involved earlier on in the project before curricular materials were developed appear to have exercised higher degrees of agency in adaptation, both earlier and later in the project.

Significance
The significance of this study is its contribution to designing curricular materials and professional development practices so that STEM educators can foster greater science and data literacy among students, which is an important contributor to 21st century democratic citizenship. We see promise in organizing distributed sociotechnical systems to maintain teacher agency through authentic opportunities for adaptation, and sustained dialogic interaction among teachers and university-based staff.

Authors

• Joseph L. Polman, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Michelle Whitacre, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Angela Kohnen, University of Missouri

• Rose Davidson, St. Joseph's Academy

• Engida Hailye Gebre, Simon Fraser University