Novice Development of Ambitious STEM Teaching Practices

• In Event: Teaching and Learning for Adult Skill Acquisition: Application of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus Model

Abstract

Objectives
Our research focused on the novice stage of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) adult skill acquisition model and explored how teaching practices supporting ambitious STEM instruction are enacted by pre-service teachers (PSTs) in the context of rehearsals in an Integrated STEM methods course.
Research Question
How are ambitious STEM teaching practices and supporting skills enacted by novice PSTs in the context of methods class rehearsals?
Methodology
Our work with nine career changing PSTs (NSF-Noyce Scholarship Program) is situated within an Integrated STEM Methods course that includes 80-hours of field experience in a high-need grades 9-12 STEM classroom. The underlying model used to support PST learning is grounded in a conceptual framework related to ambitious instruction—teaching and learning that supports all students in rigorous learning of STEM concepts (Ball et al., 2009; Grossman et al., 2009; Kazemi et al., 2010; Windschitl et al., 2012).Throughout the course, we emphasized four ambitious practices: (a) planning student learning experiences around big ideas, (b) selecting worthwhile STEM tasks, (c) using models to help students make sense of STEM concepts, and (d) facilitating whole class discussions that draw on and support student thinking and evidence-based explanations. To introduce PSTs to these practices, we built on the work of teacher educators who design instructional activities to engage PSTs in a cycle of rehearsals followed by feedback and reflection (Kazemi et al., 2016; Lampert et al., 2013; McDonald et al., 2013). Thus, PSTs developed/implemented a unit plan that set the context for rehearsals. Accordingly, the study data included the STEM task and model included in PST unit plans as well as video recordings of PSTs’ rehearsing the practice of facilitating whole class discussion.
Overall, our analysis focused on how PST rehearsals provided insights into their development of professional skills (Dreyfus, 2004) related to ambitious STEM teaching practices. Data were analyzed in two steps. First, drawing on STEM teacher educators’ research (Smith & Stein, 1996; Cartier et al., 2013), we developed and utilized a STEM Task Framework to assess (i.e., high to low) the rigor and cognitive demand of STEM tasks PSTs selected relative to three criteria: (a) task potential, (b) PST enactment of task, and (c) student engagement in task. Second, we timestamped/coded video-recorded teaching activities (i.e., addressing whole class, student responding to teacher, student responding to students) that PSTs engaged in while rehearsing their facilitation of a whole class discussion around STEM concepts included in the task and model.
Results and Scholarly Significance
In general, our findings indicated that the PSTs enacted ambitious teaching practice differently and retained different priorities in their approaches to rehearsing ambitious teaching practices. At a novice stage, most of the PSTs demonstrated a largely unacknowledged commitment to a didactic and traditional model of teaching. Thus, teacher education, ongoing professional development, and further research needs to emphasize the support of orientations toward STEM teaching that reflect current education scholarship as well as developing skill in the enactment of ambitious STEM teaching practices.

Authors

• Jill Birren, Marquette University

• Leigh A. Van Den Kieboom, Marquette University