R&D: The Role of Educative Curriculum Materials in Supporting Science Teaching Practices with English Language Learners

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The Role of Educative Curriculum Materialsin Supporting Science Teaching Practices with English Language LearnersSubmitted to NSF?s Discovery Research K-12Principal Investigator: Jacqueline Barber, Lawrence Hall of ScienceCo-Principal Investigator: Marco Antonio Bravo, San Francisco State UniversityCo-Principal Investigator: Jonna Kulikowich, Penn State UniversityCurriculum developers and researchers from the University of California, Berkeley?s Lawrence Hall of Science, in collaboration with English language development researchers from San Francisco State University and quantitative researchers from Penn State University, propose a 4-year, full research and development project, focused on Frontier Challenge A: How can all students be assured the opportunity to learn significant STEM content?The proposed DRK12 project aims to: (1) determine whether curriculum materials that are designed to support teacher learning, as well as student learning (known as educative curriculum materials) have positive impacts on teacher knowledge, attitudes, and instructional practices, and if so, which educative elements teachers value and use most; (2) determine to what degree educative curriculum materials help teachers who have more and less experience teaching English language learners and how level of teaching experience relates to teacher knowledge, attitudes, and instructional practices; (3) determine the effects of the educative curriculum elements in high implementation settings on ELL students? knowledge and attitudes in science, and developing English proficiency; and (4) create and disseminate a technical report that characterizes the profile of educative features that were demonstrated to be most powerful in assisting teachers in meeting the needs of English language learners.The instantiation of educative curriculum materials used will be a fifth grade curriculum unit from the NSF-funded Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading program for Grades 2-5, jointly developed by the University of California, Berkeley?s Lawrence Hall of Science and Graduate School of Education. Built into the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading teacher?s guides are just-in-time educative features, designed to support teacher learning.The proposed study will proceed in two phases. The goal of Phase One is to provide an opportunity to strengthen student measures, to give 60 teachers an opportunity to gain experience in implementing the unit and using the educative curriculum elements, and to allow program researchers to identify the highest implementation settings for a more focused study. In Phase Two, we will focus the study on 20 teachers who were high implementers of the educative curriculum elements in order to answer our questions about whether and how educative curriculum materials can support teachers in meeting the instructional needs of English language learners. Data will be analyzed using quantitative and qualitative approaches, including growth curve analysis and grounded theory.The intellectual merit of the proposed study will be to advance knowledge and understanding of: (1) the potential of well-designed educative curriculum materials to serve as an important part of the teacher professional learning picture; and (2) ways to enhance teachers? capabilities for working with a diverse student population.The broader impact of the proposed study will be to: (1) make deeper STEM content accessible to English language learners; (2) gather evidence to help set a new standard for curriculum materials so they routinely provide the assistance teachers require to meet the needs of an increasingly linguistically-diverse populace; and (3) contribute a teacher knowledge measure to the field.