Thank you for your comment Daniel.  Beyond modeling inquiry-based approaches with our students, we use a few different strategies to encourage similar approaches in future teaching.  Each laboratory write-up requires students to answer a prompt about how they can apply what they have learned in the laboratory to their future teaching.  Another prompt also requires connections to be made to the NGSS - SEPs, DCIs, and CCCs. Further, as part of the lecture component of the course, students complete an NGSS-aligned project where they visit an actual school towards the end of the semester to teach a science lesson.  We have plans to hopefully support more school visits throughout the semester rather than one single visit at the end of the semester.  We are finding that there is a large demand from local schools for NGSS science lessons. We are currently collecting data to determine how our strategies are being embedded in students' practice beyond the course.

Thank you Patrick!  Great to see you know most of our team and that you received your degree at Fresno State!

Some of the things we are planning on adjusting is the professional development we provide for laboratory instructors.  Our current data is indicating that instructors are one of the major influences on student learning outcomes. We commonly have new instructors each semester with science degrees, but little to no teaching experience/pedagogy coursework. As such, their natural proclivities are to teach how they were taught which is often a verification approach (follow the steps). Such approaches go against what we are trying to achieve with the NGSS. Supporting such changes are complex and challenging, but with two years of curriculum development/refinement, we are making progress with lots of student exemplars to showcase for new instructors.  Such exemplars help new instructors better grasp what the intention of the laboratories are.

As for cross-cutting concepts (CCCs), students are required to connect their experiments to CCCs for each laboratory write-up.  We have not went much further than that with CCCs, as it is quite a cramped course already with Physical Science.  We have placed more focus on the DCIs (through lecture) and SEPs (through laboratory). My ideal future outcome would be to have a second Physical Science course for students that would support greater focus on CCCs, but that is beyond the scope of our current work.

It's that the rub? Natural proclivities encourage reverting to old habits and learned pedagogy. We do quite a lot of work with training facilitators of science professional learning and have developed some tools to encourage high-quality facilitation. Before joining the Making Sense of SCIENCE project I had participated in several MSS Facilitation Academies. In each of these learning events, I was reminded of the Principles of MSS Facilitation. 

1. Keep conversations Evidence-based

2. Make thinking visible

3. Don't stop at one

4. Separate ideas from individuals

5. Explore ideas with words, actions, images, and symbols.

 

As a classroom teacher then, and a facilitator of adult learning now, these five principles have strengthened my ability to support group sense making.

 

It sounds like you are using video "case studies" of facilitation to give future facilitators a sense of what it looks like when it works and when it isn't working. I'm wondering if you use any criteria or description of facilitation with them as well. I'm interested to know more about how new facilitators are supported in developing their skills. 

Hi Patrick,

Yes, it's a long road to this constructivist approach to learning science. It requires some change in how our lab instructors view learning, not as a "right answer" but rather in terms of growth models.

Hope things are going well for you!

Thank you for these principles Patrick.  I have used many of these principles in practice and discussed them with instructors, but not communicated them directly in a more formal manner as you have laid them out here.  Have you found such communication valuable to instructors?  In what ways?  Do they revisit such a list?

We meet with instructors at the beginning of the semester, weekly throughout the semester, and for a review/reflection session at the end of the semester.  We discuss both positives and challenges towards achieving our goals of guided-inquiry laboratories and integration of science content (Chemistry/Physics).  Such discussions can be challenging at times because there is such a fine balance between supporting students to take ownership versus students not always wanting to take such ownership/instructors feeling the need to provide answers to students. It comes back to bridging the gap between what they (instructors and students) have previously experienced and where we want them to go!

Important question Molly!  We are currently investigating how these practices translate into future coursework and into future teaching.  We are in the process of recruiting students as they go into their first year of teaching.  Beyond the first year of teaching is currently outside the scope of our research, but it is something we would be interested in following up on. 

Thank you Jennifer!  I am interested in the exact same question you have asked so if you find out more please let me know.  A good place to look in the literature is the citing articles for this journal article by Roger Bybee.

Hello there!

We used Knowledge Integration Rubrics (KI) to measure participant understanding. The rubrics were typically 5-point scales ranging from a score of 0 (left blank or I don't know response) to a 5 (integrated scientific explanation). By using these rubrics, we were able to accurately measure growth even if participant responses were generally lacking in accuracy. For example, a participant may have had a non-normative scientific idea initially that grew into a partial normative or fully normative idea on the post-assessment. In other scales, such as multiple choice/matching/true-false, the nuances of understanding are not easily identified and while the participant may have learned, their test score doesn't reflect that. We found that true open-ended prompts gave genuine responses.  

Here is a link for the KI framework and rubric: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203806524

Your project is interesting! What challenges have you faced while viewing student responses? Are you using a rubric? 

Thank you for your question and comments!

Hi Nicole. Thank you for your comment.  If you look beside the video, we have also provided an attachment of our 2019 AERA paper that discusses our items.  Let me know if we can clarify anything. We would also be interested in learning about any items you have developed if you can share.

Great point Courtney. We have found our students to be incredibly creative in doing meaningful activities while keeping costs down.  As part of students laboratory experience, they search for different investigations online related to each week's topic. As part of this process, students find various activities beyond what they need for laboratory, but that they can use in their classrooms later.  We are going to explore equipment challenges more in the third year of the project to see how it takes shape in more classrooms.

On a slight aside, I actively encourage my students in lecture to take advantage of websites such as gofundme in combination with social media, as the community are happy to help when they can see a direct impact of their donations to classroom resources and students learning science!

Thank you for sharing Michelle.  Actually getting to guided-inquiry is particularly challenging.  One of the most difficult identity aspects not just for our students as future teachers, but instructors in general (myself included) is letting go of the "need to be the expert".  Obviously it is important to have a certain level of understanding, but the desire to be seen as an expert encourages streamlined/structured activities so that instructors cannot be moved outside their comfort zone with challenging student questions. Such circumstances are devoid of what actual laboratories are like as you have noted.  We need to be constantly mindful of balancing structure/student ownership in developing all our teaching activities.