Using Student Experience Data in Collaborative Inquiry Cycle to Support Equity in the Science Classrooms

• In Event: Epistemic Justice Across Learning Environments

Abstract

A Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) presents a vision for promoting equity through engaging students in building knowledge together to explain phenomena and solve problems that are of personal and community relevance. To this end, over the past four years, we developed and tested a strategy for data-informed decision making called the Student Experience Improvement Cycle (SEIC), which engages groups of educators and a coach in (1) adapting evidence-based practices for supporting equitable classroom talk and for enhancing the relevance of instruction;(2) testing these instructional practices in their classrooms; and (3) evaluating their short-term efficacy in improving classroom practice and student experience in the classroom.
Our SEIC strategy uses a novel system for collecting and visualizing student experience data (the Science SEET system (https://www.scienceseet.com/). The exit tickets included are a type of practical measure designed around constructs that are central for students' meaningful engagement in science practices and concepts and include a focus on students’ experiences of coherence and purpose of classroom activities (Reiser et al., 2017; 2021), the relevance of instruction to their lives and interests (NRC, 2012; Tan et al., 2012; Penuel, 2016), and their sense of agentive contribution to knowledge-building in the classroom (Stroupe, 2014; Alzen et al., 2020). Exit ticket items ask students questions such as “We work together to determine what ideas are most persuasive” (coherence), “The teacher invites us to share our experiences or ideas about a topic” (relevance) and “The teacher encourages us to build on and critique one another’s ideas” (contribution). The Science SEET system and the Inquiry Cycles of the SEIC bring together student data derived from conceptually-motivated practical measures, an interface that provides flexible displays of data for formative assessment and instructional decision-making, and research-based classroom strategies in a professional learning cycle with coaches and peers.
The SEIC is a cycle that is based on a Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle (Bryk et al., 2015) that engaged teachers in adapting evidence-based strategies for promoting more equitable small group and whole class knowledge building activities, and then gathering and interpreting student experience data to assess whether the strategy helped improve the overall student experience and differences in experience associated with students’ race and gender.
We tested the SEIC strategy in a study of forty-nine middle school science teachers remotely in two cohorts over a course of one year. And using hierarchical linear models (HLMs), we found that SEIC supported improvements in students’ perceptions of contribution in one cohort and improvements to perceptions of relevance in another. Specifically, we found that for the first cohort, Asian American students' perceptions of contributions and for the second cohort, Black students’ perceptions of relevance were on average growing faster than their counterparts. Further, from interviews with teachers, we found collaboration beneficial to broadening their sensemaking to novel SEET data and valuable for improving practice. Educators who continued to work with researchers on their own made gains after the conclusion of the series, suggesting the need to adapt the SEIC approach in multiple cycles to improve equity of outcomes and allow for more sustained engagement with data.

Authors

• Ali Raza, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author

• William R. Penuel, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Jiawei Li, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Kenneth A. Frank, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author