Teachers' Pedagogical Frames About Scientific Modeling: Being Developed Through Collective Inquiry and Guiding Classroom Teaching

• In Event: Designing for the Next Generation of Teaching Practices With a Networked Improvement Community: A Longitudinal Study of Local Adaptation and Improvement

Abstract

Purpose: The Next Generation Science Standards [NGSS] require K-12 students to participate in core practices of science, such as scientific modeling. Teachers’ pedagogical frames about scientific modeling—understandings and beliefs about what scientific modeling is and how to support students’ scientific modeling— are crucial in shaping teachers’ discourses and practices in modeling-based instructions.

Framework: This research is grounded in a socially situated approach to learning, which puts forth that meaning is constructed through interaction in social settings (Greeno, 2006). Three bodies of research informed this study: scientific modeling (Authors, 2006; Lehrer & Schauble, 2006; Schwarz, 2009), teacher framing (Goffman, 1974) and professional learning communities (Coburn, 2001; Horn, 2005). How teachers frame student learning, teaching, and subject matter can guide what they notice, how they interpret, and how they act when they interact in professional learning communities and classrooms. In this study, we focus on teachers’ pedagogical frames about scientific modeling to explore their understandings and expectations about modeling-based teaching.

Methods: We used a case study approach to examine 10 full-day professional development sessions where teachers, researchers and coaches collectively planned, implemented, and debriefed modeling lessons.

Data Sources: Video of 10 PLC days and teacher interviews.

Results: From the analysis, we identified a shift in the teachers’ frames about modeling and found that their collective inquiry guided and was shaped by their frames. The teachers’ frames about modeling influenced what they noticed about students’ modeling, how they made instructional decisions, and how they facilitated students’ modeling in classrooms. In the first year of the study teachers regarded scientific modeling as a summative activity for students to put the already-learned knowledge pieces together in the correct manner. Based on this frame, the teachers focused more on the content of scientific ideas that they expected to see in students’ models rather than the students’ ideas or explanations. They perceived their role as providing enough knowledge pieces beforehand so pieces could be applied during modeling. In classrooms during the full-day PD, they often tried to guide students to put certain scientific ideas at certain parts of models, rather than being responsive to the students’ thoughts. After one year, the teachers gradually started to focus more on causal relations in students’ models and framed modeling as students’ construction of explanations about phenomena. They discussed how to support students’ knowledge building processes and combined supports for scientific modeling with other pedagogical moves such as supporting English language learners.

The teachers’ inquiry developed as the teachers’ pedagogical frames about modeling evolved over time and shifted from a focus on modifying scaffolds to facilitating all students’ rigorous and equitable participation in scientific modeling. Researchers, coaches also shifted from leading inquiry to being co-inquirers.

Significance: This study suggests that A and B-levels of learning in the NIC are tightly interwoven and shifts can be understood through investigating teachers’ pedagogical frames which cross settings (in teacher communities and classrooms). Our findings also the importance of PLCs designed to engage in collective reasoning about instruction and core disciplinary practices through cycles of inquiry.

Authors

• Soo-Yean Shim, University of Washington - Seattle

• Jessica J. Thompson, University of Washington