Contextual Research - Empirical -STEM Teaching and Learning - Investigating Teachers' Learning, Practice, and Efficacy Using Educative Curriculum Materials

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The goal of this project is to use educative curricula materials to help transform teacher learning and practices and improve student outcomes in science. The PI investigates adding overlays to the Science, Technology, and Children (STC) curricula materials, developed by the Smithsonian Institution, as one way to increase the use of inquiry-based methods by elementary teachers. The educative overlays provide teachers with additional supports to address specific science content. These supports include subject matter content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, sample lessons, and other instructional supplements. Fifty teachers and 1000 elementary students will benefit directly from this effort. The project targets units on ecosystems and electric circuits.The study will focus on the following: How does teacher use of educative curricula relate to (a) how a teacher learns; (b) how a teacher practice what is learned (and thus how a teacher increases opportunities for students to learn); and (c) how a student learns science content and about scientific practices across scientific disciplines?The PI will use a quasi-experimental design and an observational study to compare the learning and practice of the teachers to the learning of students when teachers are supported with educative curricula materials and when they are not. The PI intends to draw on a range of data sources (e.g., classroom observations, interviews, and teacher and student assessments and artifacts) to capture the impact of the educative overlays. Content analysis will also be used to generate thematic content maps in the analysis of qualitative data while hierarchical linear modeling and repeated measures (ANOVA) will be used to compute quantitative analyses. The intended outcomes of this project includes better ways to teach inquiry at the elementary level; educative overlays in both expository and narrative forms; improved theoretical knowledge of teacher learning; an empirical trace of connections among opportunities for teachers to learn, their knowledge, their practice, and the outcomes of their students.