Linking Discourse and Key Epistemic Practices: Tracing the Diffusion of Knowledge From Professional Development Contexts Into the Classroom

• In Event: Following the Thread From Planning to High-Quality Discourse About Science

Abstract

The new vision of science education (called for in the NRC Framework and NGSS) requires a shift from “learning about” to “figuring out.” In the Next Generation Science Exemplar Project (NGSX), we conceptualize this shift as fundamentally a discursive shift – requiring that students participate in key epistemic practices, as interrelated intellectual practices that support and leverage one another. In response, we have developed NGSX as a cyber-enabled system, blending digital resources and interactivity with face-to-face study groups of educators (typically a cohort of 15-20 participants) in 2 pathways : 1) a 30-hour NGSX Teacher Pathway as well as a 45-hour Leadership Pathway (combining the Teacher Pathway with Facilitator “Chapters”). The NGSX system emphasizes the core epistemic practices of modeling, argument, and explanation, supporting participants to engage in these practices rather than learning about them (ngsx.org). The goal is that NGSX teachers can apprentice into these practices in a robust enough way that they can then support their own students to engage, equitably, in a classroom culture of public reasoning (emphasizing modeling, argument, and explanation), carried primarily through well-guided discourse (talk and text).

What counts as well-guided discourse that promotes engagement in these core epistemic practices? We conceptualize this as discourse that supports the following 4 goals or challenges that all science teachers (and by extension, science PD providers working with teachers as adult learners) face:
1) learners explicate and go public with their own ideas;
2) learners listen carefully to their peers;
3) learners dig deeper into their evidence, reasoning, and explanatory models;
4) learners engage with the thinking of others, building on and critiquing the ideas of their peers and other “experienced thinkers” in science

What types of scaffolds are used to elicit these conversations? What kind of preparation do teachers need to make it happen in the classroom? In designing NGSX to support a PD culture of respect, risk-taking, and collaborative reasoning (through well-guided participation in modeling, argument, and explanation), we have developed a “knowledge-building framework” with key design principles. We focus central attention on adult participation in well-guided science investigations, analysis of video cases of actual in situ science learning, and recurring opportunities for small and whole group discussion around 1) science content; 2) thinking about student thinking and “first-draft” epistemic talk; and 3) learning about and trying out new pedagogical strategies and talk tools in one’s own classroom, to support the practices of modeling, argument, and explanation. To trace the diffusion of these epistemic practices from Teacher Leaders, to K-12 classroom teachers, to their students, we are currently developing “practice-relevant discourse coding tools,” to assess the quality of modeling, argument, and explanation talk in whole group discussions. In our poster, initial data from pre-post surveys and classroom discussions from teachers in VT and CT will be presented. Given the centrality of discourse in the Framework and NGSS, these discourse coding and reflection tools are likely to be a major contribution to the field in supporting NGSS-aligned research as well as professional learning.

Authors

• Sarah Michaels, Clark University

• Renee A. Affolter, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Jean Moon, Tidemark Institute

• Catherine O'Connor, Boston University

• Brian J. Reiser, Northwestern University