Building Capacity for Science Standards through Networked Improvement Communities

科学方面的大学和职业准备标准对教育工作者来说既是一个挑战，也是一个机遇。机会在于这样一个愿景，即新标准为创建一支准备好STEM的劳动力和具有科学素养的公民设定了新的标准。具体地说，这些标准明确了学生在毕业时应该熟练掌握的重要内容和科学实践。不仅在内容和练习方面，而且在参与练习的内在语言要求方面，对学生的标准也更高。因此，对教师、教师教育工作者和更广泛的教育界提出了更高的要求。该项目将教师、教师教育工作者、管理人员和研究人员聚集在一起，探讨如何发展雄心勃勃和公平的实践，以支持学习科学实践(如开发和使用科学模型，建立以证据为基础的科学解释和论证，交流研究结果等)。并为科学实践，特别是英语学习者的特殊语言需求创造支架(Lee，Quinn&ValdéS，2013年)。研究人员正在实施一种被称为网络改进社区(NIC)的变革模型(Bryk，Gomez&Amp；Grunow，2011)。该社区将通过基于网络的技术基础设施将地方改进网络(LIN是由教师、教师教育工作者、行政人员和研究人员组成的团体)联系起来，以支持不断改进严格和公平的课堂教学形式。LINS都在与高英语学习者群体合作，并致力于改善对所有学生的科学教学。调查人员正在帮助LINS使用标准、雄心勃勃的教学实践的表现进度和学生在评估中的表现数据来定义问题空间。作为一个社区，调查人员使用这些资源来问：什么管用？为了谁？在什么情况下呢？除了共享工具或培训教师开发人员外，NIC还致力于工具和实践的快速原型制作，特别关注改善对英语学习者的教学。网络改进社区为成员提供了分享和经验性地测试工具和其他课程资源的机会，以便能够产生实践和工具的生产性变化。该系统将加快教学实践和专业学习模式的发展，使其与大学和职业准备科学的标准保持一致，并了解如何开发和维持专门面向教学改进的NIC。

The college and career readiness standards in science represent both a challenge and an opportunity for educators. The opportunity lies in the vision that new standards set for the creation of a STEM ready workforce and scientifically literate citizens. Specifically, the standards clarify important content and science practices that students should be proficient in by the time they graduate. The bar is set higher for students, not only in terms of the content and practices but also in terms of the inherent linguistic demands of participating in the practices. Consequently, more will be required of teachers, teacher educators and the broader education community. This project brings together teams of teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and researchers to inquire into the development of ambitious and equitable practices that support learning the scientific practices (such as developing and using scientific models, and building evidence-based scientific explanations and arguments, communicating findings, etc.) and creating scaffolds for the special language demands of the scientific practices, particularly for English Language Learners (Lee, Quinn & Valdés, 2013). The researchers are implementing a model for change referred to as a Networked Improvement Community, or NIC (Bryk, Gomez & Grunow, 2011). This community will link Local Improvement Networks (LINs are groups of teachers, teacher educators, administrators and researchers) through a web-based technological infrastructure to support the continual improvement of rigorous and equitable forms of classroom instruction. The LINs are all working with high English Language Learner populations and are committed to improving science instruction for all students. The investigators are helping LINs define a problem space using the standards, performance progressions for ambitious teaching practices, and data on students' performance on assessments. As a community, the investigators use these resources to ask: What works? For whom? And under what conditions? More than just sharing tools or training teacher developers, the NIC is engaged in rapid prototyping of tools and practices with a specific focus on improving instruction for English Language Learners. The Networked Improvement Community affords the opportunity for members to share and empirically test tools and other curricular resources so that productive variations of practices and tools can be generated. The system will accelerate the development of both teaching practices and professional learning models aligned with the college and career ready standards in science and understanding how to develop and sustain NICs that are oriented specifically around the improvement of instruction.