Improving the Effectiveness of Teacher Diagnostic Skills and Tools

该项目是一个为期五年的专业资源开发项目，以“诊断”软件为中心，此前由NSF资助。该软件允许识别学生在多个科学内容领域的替代概念。先前的研究表明，在运动学领域与学生和老师一起使用该软件，学生的成绩提高了15%。该项目正在将该软件扩展到另外三个内容领域：物质的性质、热量和温度、物理和化学变化，面向五到十年级的学生。除了软件之外，该项目正在开发一个框架，用于在专业发展中使用诊断课堂工具，以深化主题内容知识，丰富教学内容知识，拓宽课程内容知识，并磨练科学教师，特别是那些在科学教学中有意使用评估的新手的诊断技能。该项目涉及华盛顿州的大学合作伙伴、三个学区和多所学校。大约20到50名教师花了大量的时间来使用软件，并作为新内容模块的试点站点。额外的教师被介绍到软件和诊断测试的概念，在研讨会和在线环境。

The project is a five-year professional resource development project centered on the "Diagnoser" software previously funded by NSF. The software allows for the identification of alternative conceptions that students have in multiple science content areas. Previous research had shown an increase of up to 15% in student achievement based upon using the software with students and teachers in the area of kinematics. The project is developing extensions of the software into three more content areas: Properties of Matter, Heat and Temperature, and Physical and Chemical Changes for students in grades five to ten. In addition to the software, the project is developing a framework for using diagnostic classroom tools in the delivery of professional development to deepen the subject matter content knowledge, enrich the pedagogical content knowledge, broaden the curricular content knowledge, and hone the diagnostic skills for science teachers, especially those who are new to the intentional use of assessment in science instruction. The project involves university partners, three school districts and multiple schools in the state of Washington. Approximately 20 to 50 teachers spend substantial time working the software and serve as the pilot sites for the new content modules. Additional teachers are introduced to the software and the concept of diagnostic testing both in workshops and online environments.