Facilitating Productive Exchanges in Virtual Study Groups for Science Teachers

• In Event: 77.038 - Discourse in the Digital World: Design and Facilitation of Online Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

Objectives and Perspective

An overarching question has emerged in professional development for science teachers: In what ways do virtual professional learning environments support collaborative knowledge-building among teachers in order to advance the dramatic shifts in their practice called for in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)? (Dede et al., 2009; NASEM, 2015; Wilson, 2013).

Virtual study groups (VSGs) have the potential to support teachers in making these shifts by providing opportunities to build a learning community outside of their school environment, helping them address challenges they face while implementing new NGSS-aligned curricula. However, research on virtual study groups and how they might support these shifts in science teacher practice is limited.

We focus on the following research questions: What are the characteristics of a productive exchange in a VSG of teachers who are implementing the same science curriculum unit in different schools? What role, if any, do study group facilitators play in these productive exchanges?


Methods and Data

We explore these questions in the context of the Next Generation Science Exemplar project (NGSX), a blended professional learning system for K-16 science educators. Learning While Teaching (LWT), a small pilot program within NGSX, has teachers, in grade band-aligned cohorts, attend a week-long, face-to-face summer institute. In the fall, teachers in each cohort enact a shared curriculum unit that supports the goals of NGSS. During this enactment process, cohorts meet in VSGs every other week for 90 minutes. Guiding these bi-weekly meetings are two experienced facilitators — one immersed in the content of the curriculum unit and one who is very skilled at knowledge-building facilitation. Each VSG session focuses on four elements: troublesome or tricky patches in the enactment process, coherence across lessons, examining student sense-making of science ideas, and classroom culture.

For this study, we analyze video recordings of VSG meetings from two cohorts, seven middle school teachers enacting a unit on sound, and six high school teachers enacting a biology unit on population dynamics and natural selection. In these recordings we look specifically for productive exchanges, ones that result in at least one teacher sharing an intended change to be made andstating or implying why. Furthermore, a reason(s) for making that change is somehow reflected in the group’s exchange.


Preliminary Findings

A preliminary analysis shows that in productive exchanges, a teacher begins by describing a specific problem/challenge while teaching the unit. Others in the group not only offer suggestions, they also engage with that teacher’s reasoning about why the problem may be happening. Also in these productive exchanges, the facilitators use certain talk moves to encourage teachers to deepen their reasoning and engage with each other’s experiences with the curriculum.


Significance

Complex shifts in practice call for high-quality, versatile, accessible, and on-going professional development opportunities that are tied closely to classroom practice. Virtual professional learning environments have such affordances. The goal of this study is to inform the practice of VSGs by identifying and characterizing episodes of dialogue that support individual teachers in moving toward informed instructional changes.

Authors

• Jean Moon, Tidemark Institute

• Leslie Duhaylongsod, Salem State University

• Sarah Michaels, Clark University

• Margaret E Foster, Next Generation Science Exemplar System