The Sustainability of Instructional Innovations as an Emergent Property of the Systems That Implement Them

• In Event: 32.029 - Supporting Science as a Modeling Practice in the Classroom Through the Lens of Next Generation Science Standards

Abstract

Objectives. Our poster engages questions of scalability and sustainability in instructional innovations. An innovation is scalable if it can be sustainably implemented in a large community. However, we problematize what makes for sustainability - in particular, rejecting the idea that the ambitiousness or complexity of an innovation necessarily makes it objectively less sustainable. Instead, we characterize sustainability as a systemic property of implementations, where relevant systems elements include the innovation itself, the teacher, the classroom culture, and the broader institutional context. An innovation that achieves resonance among the elements of this system can be sustainable, even when it may seem more demanding or complex than the norm, or than other innovations that are not sustainable for the system.
Moreover, we suggest that the goal of achieving scalability for an innovation may be better served by cultivating multiple models of sustainable implementation among early implementing groups, than by identifying a single, more narrow view of “fidelity” and attempting to disseminate this single model among an entire community.

Theoretical Framework. We ground our discussion in a case study from ModelSim, a four-year design and implementation project that developed and tested curricular modules across four subject areas in over 100 high school science classrooms in the spirit of Design-Based Implementation Research (Penuel & Fishman, 2012).
The modules integrate multiple modalities of agent-based modeling (ABM), including model-based inquiry; bifocal modeling (Blikstein et al, 2012); and participatory simulations (Authors, 1999; Klopfer, Yoon & Perry, 2005). Each is built upon constructionist design principles (Papert, 1991) and on a history of research using agent-based and embodied modeling approaches (Authors, 2001; Authors, 2006) to engage with key scientific phenomena as the emergent behavior of complex systems (Authors, 2014).

Methods and Data. Our presentation focuses on a teacher who implemented ModelSim’s Particulate Nature of Matter (PNoM) unit during the project, and who then continued to adapt and implement Syringineering (arguably PNoM’s most technologically challenging activities; see Figs 1-3) independently, after the funded project ended. Analyses of interview data from during and after the project indicate how this teacher’s institutional situation, her teaching goals and practices, and her classroom culture resonated to make implementing Syringineering sustainable for her.

Results. We describe how, for her, Syringineering came to emblematize an epistemic stance toward the teaching and learning of Chemistry. Our analysis suggests that key aspects of her epistemic stance emerged contemporaneously with her iterative adaptation and implementation of PNoM. The sustainably-implementable unit and the conditions for its sustainability co-evolved through her work with the project materials.

Scholarly significance. These findings have implications for efforts to create sustainable, scalable innovations. We show that complex innovations can be adopted sustainably, even in absence of researcher support, if they align with teachers’ instructional goals, epistemic stance, and classroom culture. This suggests striving for fidelity in implementations by restricting teacher adaptation or minimizing “moving parts” may be misguided: broader adoption of innovations may come from a higher degree of flexibility, along with attention to teachers’ knowledge commitments.

Authors

• Corey Brady, Vanderbilt University - Peabody College

• Nathan Holbert, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Uri J. Wilensky, Northwestern University