Working on the Practice of Eliciting and Working With Students' Ideas in a Museums Setting

• In Event: Examining Practice-Based Science Teacher Education

Abstract

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) conjures images of dinosaur bones, wildlife dioramas, and that iconic giant blue whale. People may not think of the museum as a context for teacher preparation and professional learning. However, cultural institutions have been playing an increasingly influential role in the educational landscape (Price & Chiu, 2018), and the AMNH is no exception. The museum currently serves thousands of teachers a year in professional development programs and is also home to the only Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program occurring in a museum. The MAT Urban Residency program, situated in the Richard Gilder Graduate School, prepares approximately fifteen graduate students per year to teach in city schools. To date, the program has prepared 124 certified earth science teachers to teach in high-needs middle schools and high schools in New York State.
An important goal of the program is to provide preservice teachers opportunities to learn to interact with and support learners in sensemaking. Two courses focus, in particular, on the practice of eliciting and working with students’ ideas (Windschitl, Thompson & Braaten, 2018). In this poster, we describe the ways in which these two courses (Museum Residency I and Curriculum and Instruction in Earth Science) support the practice of eliciting and working with students’ ideas and the ways in which preservice teachers demonstrate increasing facility with enacting this practice, the main benefits we see, and the challenges.
During the Museum Residency, which occurs during the first summer of the program, preservice teachers facilitate conversations with visitors at touch carts within the exhibition halls. Curriculum and Instruction in Earth Science builds on their experiences in the summer and provides additional tools and rehearsal opportunities for preservice teachers to hone their practice. In particular, they plan and participate in rehearsals of eliciting ideas about an observable scientific phenomenon (e.g. crushing a can in a bath of ice water) and analyze the use of “discussion moves” of their colleagues during these rehearsals.
We analyzed video of preservice teachers facilitating visitor discussion at touch carts and during teaching rehearsals to determine how they were using discussion moves and which aspects of the practice needed additional support. We found that preservice teachers experienced early success with open-ended questions and discussion moves designed to elicit additional information and elaboration. They struggled with linking and building on students’ ideas to move the discussion in a productive direction. Furthermore, though the museum (at least in pre-COVID times) provides unique access to a diverse audience of visitors, and many opportunities for the preservice teachers to hone their practice of eliciting ideas, we found that we needed to support the preservice teachers in making the connection between their interactions with visitors and their interactions with future students to make the learning experience the most fruitful. We discuss specific changes we made to the courses to maximize learning opportunities and improve preservice teachers’ practice.

Authors

• Anna MacPherson, American Museum of Natural History

• Elaine Howes, American Museum of Natural History

• Karen M. Hammerness, American Museum of Natural History

• Preeti Gupta, American Museum of Natural History

• Naina Abowd

• Rosamond Kinzler, American Museum of Natural History