Retreat to Online? Adapting to Online Professional Development and Curriculum Development to Promote Geospatial Inquiry

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Best Practices for Transitioning Traditional Face-to-Face Professional Development to Virtual Collaborative Spaces

Abstract

In February 2020, as the CoVID-19 pandemic began, our research team received National Science Foundation funding for a multi-year project to work with high school teachers to iteratively design, develop, and implement, curriculum-aligned geospatial learning activities in a variety of subject areas. This project expanded the scope of our prior funded work in terms of geographic location, curriculum contexts, and institutional structures. In this paper, we focus on the first-year findings with five teachers across two participating urban high schools during a global pandemic. We then investigate the pedagogical adaptations made to curriculum development strategies and instructional support in response to a school year of fully online professional development and classroom teachers engaging with their students in online learning environments.

Authors

• Kate L. Popejoy, Popejoy STEM LLC

• Thomas C. Hammond, Lehigh University

• Alec M Bodzin, Lehigh University

• Douglas Leeson, Lehigh University