Educative Curriculum Material to Support In-Service Science Teachers' Learning About Argumentation

• In Event: 79.045 - Examining Successes and Challenges From Five Different Science Teacher Professional Development Projects Around the Next Generation Science Standards

Abstract

Recent reform efforts in science education include a shift to focusing on science practices, such as arguing from evidence. Teachers require support in integrating these science practices into their instruction. Educative curriculum materials (ECMs) have great potential as a tool to support teacher learning, particularly for inservice teachers (Arias, Bismack, Davis & Palincsar, 2016; Ball & Cohen, 1996; Cervetti, Kulikowich & Bravo, 2015; Davis & Krajcik, 2005). In this paper, we describe an intervention in which we developed and researched web-based educative curriculum materials focused on supporting teacher learning about the practice of scientific argumentation. In this project, educative elements were incorporated into a web-based teacher’s guide for a middle school Earth and Space Science curriculum.

The educative curriculum materials were designed to support teacher learning in three ways:
1. Supports embedded in the lesson plans themselves. The lessons, including both the student-facing materials (such as projections or student sheets) and the teacher-facing materials (such as descriptions of lesson goals and step-by-step instructions for teaching the lesson) were designed to support teacher learning about the practice of argumentation;
2. Supports in text-based educative features. Educative teacher notes, included in each lesson, provided explicit support for teacher learning;
3. Supports in multimedia educative elements. We took advantage of the affordances of a digital teacher’s guide to develop multimedia educative curriculum materials (MECMs). These included 24 short, teacher-facing educative videos, each focusing on different aspects of teaching argumentation. The videos combined classroom footage, interviews with teachers and scientists, graphics, and narrative voiceovers. These videos, along with other multimedia elements including interactive reflective prompts, slideshows and podcasts, embedded within the lesson plans, provided additional support for teacher learning about argumentation.
We investigated teachers’ use of the materials in a study involving 90 teachers. All teachers taught the curriculum, using a web-based teacher’s guide. Additionally, half the teachers received a version of the curriculum with the MECMs (videos, interactive reflective prompts, and other multimedia elements).

We collected multiple data sources: pre-surveys, backend curriculum use, self-report curriculum use, and post surveys. Results suggest that enacting a curriculum with a focus on argumentation was associated with positive changes in teachers’ beliefs about this science practice. Furthermore, we observed a wide range in how teachers used the curriculum. In terms of self-efficacy, this differential use was associated with differences in changes to teachers’ beliefs. Teachers became more confident in their ability to teach argumentation as they enacted more lessons. Our findings suggest that educative curriculum materials are a promising avenue for supporting inservice teacher learning. Future efforts should take into consideration teachers’ use patterns in order to increase the likelihood that teachers will use and benefit from educative elements.

Authors

• Suzanna Jane Loper, University of California - Berkeley

• Megan Goss, Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California - Berkeley

• Katherine L. McNeill, Boston College