Co-Designing Supports for Science Instruction: Lessons From a Research-Practice Partnership

• In Event: Designing for Teacher Learning and Enduring Reform Within Science Education

Abstract

This poster describes collaborative, iterative design conducted by district leaders and researchers working in partnership to improve elementary science learning experiences and outcomes for English Learners (ELs). The aim of the partnership is to identify, prototype, test, and refine a context-rich system of supports for elementary schools and teachers to provide high quality science instruction for all students including ELs, aligned to the NGSS-inspired Nevada Academic Content Standards for Science (NVACSS). In this poster, we describe (a) the co-design process, including the boundary objects and practices that helped bridge cultural differences between researchers and practitioners, (b) the outcomes of co-design, including professional development and supports for teacher learning communities, and (c) the implementation of these supports in 6 schools.
Three theoretical perspectives inform our work: (a) Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR; Penuel et al., 2011), including the principles of specifying the problem of practice from multiple stakeholder viewpoints, and engaging in collaborative iterative design to address it; (b) Improvement Science (Bryk, et al., 2015), including the principles of making the work problem-specific and user-centered, focusing on variation in performance, and identifying and describing the system that produces the current outcomes; and (c) the use of boundary practices and boundary objects (e.g., Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) to bridge cultural differences between researchers and practitioners and anchor our joint work.
The co-design activities at the center of our project are informed by secondary analyses of student standardized science test scores as well as primary data collection activities in schools with high concentrations of ELs, including (a) surveys of principals and lead science teachers in 44 schools and (b) interviews with principals and lead science teachers in 10 schools. Surveys and interviews with principals and lead science teachers indicated that schools varied in terms of the time devoted to science instruction, and the extent to which teachers were enacting hands-on science learning. They also illuminated that (a) teachers felt unprepared to facilitate hands-on science learning experiences and integrate language development with such experiences and that (b) students were reading and writing about—rather than doing—science at several schools.
Analyses of data helped structure collaborative design. Members of the partnership developed a driver diagram, returning to iterate on it after each round of data collection and analysis, to identify specific change ideas linked to high-priority district initiatives. The change ideas informed the prototyping of supports for teachers (e.g., practices and tools for professional learning communities) and schools (principal workshops focused on evaluating science discourse) to promote language development in the context of science learning. These supports were tested and refined in six schools with high EL populations.
Lessons learned from our work highlight the importance of, and strategies for, (a) focusing improvement efforts on the school as a whole rather than individual teachers and classrooms; (b) aligning improvement targets (and supports) with priorities and initiatives to which teacher and schools are accountable; (c) using boundary practices (e.g., analyses of student data) and boundary objects (e.g., driver diagrams) to inform collaborative design.

Authors

• Eileen Gilligan, Clark County School District

• Nonye Alozie, SRI Internatinal

• Savitha Moorthy, SRI International

• Andrew E. Krumm, SRI International

• David Miller, Clark County School District

• Kevin David Biesinger, Clark County School District