Understanding Teacher Enactment of New Science Standards and Needs for Implementation Support

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Researchers will examine the fidelity and quality of their implementation of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in response to an extensive professional development program of workshops and professional learning communities. In addition the study will investigate how individual teacher background characteristics, their personal beliefs about science teaching and learning, the characteristics of their students, and other contextual variables affect such implementation. Study findings will inform district and state policy makers about types of supports teachers need to implement NGSS successfully, and will differentiate between supports for various teacher backgrounds and student groups. As such, the project will support improved science teaching in more sites and for more students nationwide. NGSS classroom implementation will be observed in four California districts receiving extensive professional development and related implementation supports through a program funded by the Bechtel Foundation. The research will include individual case studies and a cross-case analysis on a set of 20 middle school teacher leaders and 40 rank-and-file middle school teachers receiving various levels of support. Teachers will be recruited based on sampling criteria that include prior science teaching experiences, teaching conditions, teacher content backgrounds, characteristics of students served, and location. For each teacher case, researchers will inspect lesson plans and curricular documents, conduct classroom observations, collect teaching artifacts, and interview the teachers. In addition, researchers will conduct teacher surveys, and a survey of students' opportunities to learn. This project is supported by NSF's EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field.