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The Science and Engineering Practices Collaborative Research-Practitioner Partnership: Partnering With Districts for Co-Designing Meaningful Framework-Aligned Professional Learning

Tue, April 9, 12:20 to 1:50pm, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Floor: 200 Level, Room 205B

Abstract

Objectives and Framing
As more states adopt A Framework for K-12 Science Education (Framework; NRC 2012), professional learning needs to be responsive to the opportunities for practice that arise when teachers are required to expand instruction from centering conceptual learning to include meaningfully engaging in disciplinary practices (Berland et al., 2016), and create equitable learning experiences for all students. In this study, we describe a professional learning program for K-12 science teachers situated within a Research-Practitioner Partnership (RPP; Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013) that foregrounds cultural exchange and collaborative engagement in order to identify and resource local opportunities for practice that are consequential for all stakeholders. This approach, grounded in cultural pathways learning (Bell, Tzou, Bricker, & Baines, 2012) and situative teacher learning (Horn & Little, 2010), emphasizes that learning is social in nature, occurs across contexts, and involves contextualized activities.  

Methods, Context, Data Sources, and Analysis
The Science and Engineering Practices Collaborative (SEPC), a collaboration between university researchers, and administrators and educators from two school districts in the US, was created to support K-12 science teachers learn about equitable three-dimensional science instruction. SEPC was studied through design based implementation research (DBIR; Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2011) across the five years of the partnership. Data sources included: teacher responses to practical measures surveys and within-professional-learning exit tickets, agendas and notes from each co-design session and each professional learning session, artifacts produced to support 3D science instruction, and email correspondence between stakeholders. We engaged in reconstructive analysis (Carspecken, 1996), identifying themes related to the types of tools and participation structures that would foster teacher learning.

Results and Significance
Three major design principles emerged from our analyses. First, SEPC partners developed and leveraged locally-contextualized tools designed to support teachers’ professional learning. These tools became generalized through the co-design process and began to travel as supports in other locations through an emerging online hub (e.g., Science talk activities). Second, the SEPC partnership developed multiple strategies for collecting data on emerging teacher and student learning opportunities to inform the co-design process. One approach were practical measures (Jackson, Henrick, Cobb, Kochmanski, & Nieman, 2016), which acted as a sensing mechanism for understanding what aspects of the professional learning were influencing instructional practices and learning, to then inform the co-design of future professional learning activities. Third, SEPC centered teachers’ voices and experiences as fundamental to the co-design process, engaging in collaborative sense-making of student-produced artifacts and student reasoning, as well as friendly and critical examination of each other’s pedagogical practices. In the latest year of the project, the design of the professional learning program became fluid, with teacher leaders co-designing and co-facilitating the sessions. This work is significant as it suggests that professional learning focused on equitable three-dimensional science instruction should: (1) provide space to identify and engage with opportunities for practice; (2) occur as collaborative inquiry among heterogeneous participants with respectful interactions; and (3) leverage teachers’ agency in sinking into meaningful, contextualized activity from which learning can provide generalizable guidance for other educators.

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