Assessing the Impact of the MSPs: K-8 Science (AIM: K-8 Science)

该项目正在研究NSF的数学与科学伙伴关系(MSP)计划对教师教学知识、课堂实践和学生成绩的影响。这项跨站点研究通过10个MSP项目考察了教师专业发展经验的性质与教师和学生成果之间的关系。一个在研究设计、数据分析、专业发展和科学内容方面具有专业知识的咨询委员会在整个研究过程中提供反馈。鉴于这一领域的努力程度，该领域对深化数学和科学教师教学知识的专业发展战略的了解令人惊讶地有限。在这些发现的基础上取得进展的一个挑战是，人们使用教师内容知识这个术语来表示非常不同的东西。该领域面临的另一个挑战是了解哪些策略或特点在专注于深化教师教学知识的专业发展计划中最重要。最后，当前文献中许多关于专业发展的研究在研究设计和/或工具方面存在很大限制，限制了所了解的知识。这项研究正在通过开发一个系统来获取跨MSP项目的等值数据来应对这些挑战。这项研究记录了向教师提供的专业发展(即干预措施)的细节，以及使用跨MSP的通用工具来衡量教师教学知识和学生学习。数据正在使用分层线性建模(HLM)进行分析。分析的第一阶段考察了MSP对教师教学知识的影响，并调查了不同专业发展方法的相对影响。第二阶段探索教师教学知识、课堂实践和学生成绩之间的关系。这项研究还审查了哪些中期战略计划方法在缩小历史性成就差距方面似乎最有希望。此外，该研究还为每个伙伴中期战略计划提供了具体项目的影响结果，包括适当的统计测试结果，并协助合作伙伴设计和实施进一步的分析。合作伙伴MSP使用MSP知识管理和传播项目制定的证据审查流程标准对他们准备的报告/文章进行反馈。该项目以几种重要方式增加了知识库。首先，关于MSP对K-8科学教师教学知识、课堂实践和学生学习的影响的研究结果可以为未来专业发展努力的设计提供指导。第二，改进具体项目评估的方法，同时为更广泛和复杂的跨站点分析提供数据，有可能在国家科学基金会和其他资助者支持的未来项目中增强知识生成。

This project is studying the impact of NSF's Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program on teacher content knowledge, classroom practice, and student achievement. This cross-site study is examining the relationship between the nature of teachers' professional development experiences and both teacher and student outcomes across 10 MSP projects. An advisory board with expertise in research design, data analysis, professional development, and science content is providing feedback throughout the study. What the field knows about professional development strategies to deepen the content knowledge of mathematics and science teachers is surprisingly limited given the extent of efforts in this area. One challenge for moving forward from these findings is that people use the term teacher content knowledge to mean very different things. Another challenge for the field is understanding which strategies or features matter most in professional development programs focused on deepening teacher content knowledge. Finally, substantial constraints in the research design, and/or instrumentation of many of the studies of professional development in the current literature have limited what has been learned. The study is addressing these challenges by developing a system for capturing equivalent data across MSP projects. The study is documenting details on the professional development offered to teachers (i.e., the interventions), as well as measuring teacher content knowledge and student learning using common instruments across the MSPs. Data are being analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The first phase of the analysis examines the impact of the MSPs on teacher content knowledge and investigates the relative impacts of different approaches to the professional development. The second phase extends the work to explore the relationships among teacher content knowledge, classroom practices, and student achievement. The study is also examining which MSP approaches appear most promising for closing historic achievement gaps.In addition, the study is providing project-specific impact findings for each partner MSP, including results from appropriate statistical tests, and assisting partners with designing and implementing further analyses. Partner MSPs are given feedback on reports/articles they prepare using the standards of evidence review process developed by the MSP Knowledge Management and Dissemination project.This project is adding to the knowledge base in several important ways. First, findings about the impact of MSPs on K-8 science teacher content knowledge, classroom practice, and student learning can provide guidance in the design of future professional development efforts. Second, the methodology for improving project-specific evaluations and at the same time providing data for more extensive and sophisticated cross-site analyses has the potential to enhance knowledge generation in future programs supported by NSF and other funders.