Instructional Scaffolds to Support Teachers' Design of Next Generation Science Standards–Aligned Lessons

• In Event: 58.082 - Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: 58.082-15 - The Affordances and Challenges of Design-Based Research Approaches for Addressing Reform Math and Science Instruction

Abstract

The tenets of DBR—producing usable knowledge (Lagemann, 2002), pursuing joint goals of improving practice and refining theory (Barab & Squire, 2004), and iterating cycles of design, enactment, and analysis (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003) – provide a useful framework for enacting change. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) raise concerns about how to support teachers meeting its substantially new demands (Pruitt, 2014). Little is known about how to organize PD for NGSS, creating a need for design research that can be responsive to emergent teacher needs in an ongoing way. We have been using DBR to develop PD for a group of urban secondary science teachers learning to teach the NGSS (N=26).
We aim to support teachers engaging students in productive scientific argument. We see argument as emerging within all aspects of science practice (Manz, 2014), thus a useful organizer for productive student talk. Our initial PD design included a three-day summer institute introducing the NGSS and immersive learning experiences using NGSS science practices, and two lesson study cycles during the school year to organize teachers’ collaborative instructional adaptation.
After the first lesson study cycle, we saw a practical need to maintain contact with our teachers before the start of the next cycle and recognized an opportunity to get formative data on our ongoing design enactment. We interviewed teachers individually, and reviewed field notes and PD artifacts to identity where teachers perceived needs for additional support. We found teachers: 1) did not view the science practices as a means for conceptual learning; 2) believed students needed to know concepts before engaging in practices; and 3) wanted more structure for lesson adaptation. We used these findings to revise the design of our second lesson study cycle to offer the NGSX storyline tool (Reiser, Novak, & Fumagalli, 2015). This tool provides a structure for planning lessons in terms of the science practices students can do to learn particular concepts and their relations. We also made a concerted effort to challenge traditional notions of science teaching as lesson study groups designed their lessons. Introducing the storyline tool shifted teachers’ talk about lesson planning, orienting them to design opportunities for students to share and revise their ideas. Artifacts from the second cycle indicated teachers designed opportunities for students to share and revise their ideas, and included closer approximations of science practice as the means to idea revision.
We see this experience as an example of a meso-cycle of analysis previously unidentified in DBR scholarship. It is in between the more common micro-cycle analysis of specific activities and revision to subsequent activities, and smaller than macro-cycle retrospective analysis of a complete enactment cycle (Gravemeijer & Cobb, 2006). In our case, gaps between cycles of activity provided opportunities to reflect on data needed to evaluate the design and create unplanned opportunities to get such data. This enables principled change to an ongoing enactment. Meso-cycle analysis may have particular value to the complex PD efforts needed for NGSS and similar reforms.

Authors

• Jarod N. Kawasaki, University of California - Los Angeles

• William A. Sandoval, University of California - Los Angeles

• Lilia Rodriguez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Nathan Cournoyer, University of California - Los Angeles

• Na'im Shahid Eggleston, University of California - Los Angeles