Science Teacher Learning Practices in a Curriculum Adaptation Professional Development Model

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

Abstract

In this design-based implementation research project (DBIR; Penuel, et al., 2011), researchers collaborated with elementary and middle school teachers from two school districts to adapt, study, and refine instructional materials in support of engaging youth in the epistemic practices of science and engineering. We seek to understand how designed elements of a curriculum adaptation PD project supported teacher learning and influence classroom implementation of the adapted curricular materials.
Curriculum adaptation is a promising model of professional development (PD) for supporting teams of teachers in achieving the vision laid out in the Framework and NGSS. Other research has shown that teachers who experienced explicit PD in adapting curriculum produce higher quality curriculum compared to teachers who create their own or adopt designed curriculum (Penuel & Gallagher, 2009). Further, teachers assimilate new curricular strategies into their existing context based on students’ needs, their own pedagogical values, and local constraints (Squire, MaKinster, Barnett, Luehmann, & Barab, 2003). We focused on depth of implementation as a critical factor of scalability, looking beyond the presence of adapted materials in classrooms to the “underlying pedagogical principles embodies in the ways teachers engage students” (Coburn, 2003, p. 5) in the adapted materials. We studied how teachers learn about new social practices for instruction in relation to multiple other intersecting practices that shaped their teaching (Authors).
The research team engaged in the co-design of PD with the larger project team and the co-design of instruction with teachers. Data sources include field notes, audio/video, and instructional artifacts from grade-level PD sessions, school-based professional learning community meetings, and classroom instruction. Data were open coded and then triangulated across sources to draw conclusions and implications related to design elements of the PD.
The new instructional practices and tools introduced during PD were taken up within the context of teachers’ existing instructional practices. After employing and refining a specific writing scaffold for evidence-based explanation and argumentation tasks, teachers requested more instructional strategies for engaging students in these practices—which were provided during subsequent PD. Analysis suggests that teachers’ framing of the new tasks continued to foreground written evidence-based responses and were not deeply focused on increasing students’ participation in the discursive aspects of the explanation or argumentation practices. We also analyzed teacher learning as they further adapted the new strategies to account for practices associated with other school-based initiatives related to grading and other instructional initiatives.
Professional development is often assessed on teacher self-reports and engagement, but this is not sufficient for making claims about the depth and effectiveness of instructional strategies co-developed during PD. Our analysis suggests that teachers needed support in finding and developing coherence between practice-focused instructional strategies and other classroom practices such as designing small group work and assessments. It is imperative to understand how particular curriculum adaptations play out in classrooms with students in order to make any claims about the effectiveness of the curriculum adaptation PD model.

Authors

• Tana J Peterman, University of Washington - Seattle

• Heena Lakhani, University of Washington - Seattle

• Philip L. Bell, University of Washington