Co-Designed Professional Development Resources as Epistemic Tools for Learning Across and Within States

• In Event: 34.037 - Using Epistemic Tools to Support Reasoning, Student Agency, and Equity

Abstract

Objective
Teacher professional learning, often occurring within professional development (PD) contexts, is critical to educational improvement efforts (Borko, 2004). As the NRC Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) is being implemented across the U.S., state education leaders, responsible for ensuring a coherent system of science education within states, have sought to produce epistemic tools for use with both their PD providers and teachers around this new vision. We explore resources created through collaborative design (co-design) as epistemic tools to support progressive, equitable, and evidence-based sensemaking. Specifically we address the question: What qualities of epistemic tools used within what kinds of learning practices best support meaningful professional learning?
Theoretical Framework
Educational improvement can be conceptualized as intentional shifts in the arrangement and workings of a heterogeneous and distributed complex system; thus the integration of knowledge from both research and practice are required to productively shift the routinized work of complex systems like education (Flyvbjerg, 2001). Epistemic tools designed for use in and across such complex systems need to be flexible and adaptive in nature.
Methods
The ADVANCE project (pseudonym), a research practice partnership (Coburn & Penuel, 2016) involving participants from 13 states and two universities, is engaged in the co-design and adaptive use of epistemic tools for PD. This study used a case study methodology (Yin, 2018) to examine the qualities of the resources developed through design-based implementation research (Fishman et al., 2013) and the practices that best supported the sensemaking around these resources.
Data
Data sources include interviews, surveys, field notes, and artifacts. Data analysis was done using reconstructive analysis (Carspecken, 1996). Interviews with state science leaders were conducted two times in the second year of the ADVANCE project. Surveys, field notes, and artifacts were collected at varied points throughout the project.
Results
Co-designed resources acted as epistemic tools for PD providers across and within state systems during the co-design process. PD providers engaged in rehearsals of new practices (Lampert et al., 2013) centering the codesigned resources as epistemic tools to then foster teacher sensemaking about areas of equity, formative assessment, and various aspects of three dimensional science learning.
Co-designed resources acted as epistemic tools for use with teachers when developing equitable formative assessment practices. ADVANCE resources were used in a wide variety of PD contexts to foster teacher learning, from a large multi-state regional meeting to a network of science teacher leaders in a Western state. In this way, the ADVANCE resources have acted across multiple scales and locations as epistemic tools for progressive, equitable, and evidence-based sensemaking across networks of networks.
Scholarly Significance
The way in which ADVANCE resources acted as epistemic tools to support both the learning of teachers and teacher educators across states and within states should inform new models of professional learning. Our finding show that such resources need to be adaptable to localized contexts but can also remain coherent to the vision of science education they endorse.

Authors

• Gina Tesoriero, University of Washington - Seattle

• Deb Morrison, University of Washington - Seattle

• Philip L. Bell, University of Washington

• Tiffany Neill, Oklahoma Department of Education