Developing Preservice Elementary Teachers' Ability to Facilitate Goal-Oriented Discussions in Science and Mathematics via the Use of Simulated Classroom Interactions

在教育文献中，学术话语对于支持学生发展对科学和数学学科的理解是非常重要的。大学和职业准备标准也呼吁关注支持学生学习如何像学科专家一样思考和沟通。编排课堂讨论的教学实践旨在支持学生获得更高水平的学术成就，同时也支持学生参与民主社会。然而，研究发现，教师——尤其是新手教师——很难有效地组织科学和数学的讨论。本项目的研究人员假设：1)在模拟课堂环境中练习组织讨论的机会；2)对他们的实践获得建设性的反馈；3)反思这些反馈以及他们与同伴和教师教育者的经验，培养职前教师领导富有成效的课堂讨论的能力。当他们开始在科学和数学课堂上教授真正的学生时，这可能会使他们更有效地组织讨论。该项目团队包括来自教育考试服务中心（ETS）的调查人员和Mursion的软件工程师，他们将开发、试验和验证8个以讨论为导向的性能任务，这些任务将嵌入在线模拟课堂环境中。由此产生的研究和开发产品可以在全国范围内用于教师培训和专业发展环境，以评估和发展教师支持科学和数学课堂讨论的能力。探索研究K-12 （DRK-12）项目旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高pre -12学生和教师对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和实证依据。这个早期设计和开发项目将1)迭代开发、试点和完善8个以科学和数学讨论为导向的绩效任务（6个形成性任务，2个总结性任务）、评分标准和评分员培训材料；2)在四个大学站点部署干预措施，收集240名准教师在治疗课程和常规课程中的数据；3)通过数据分析和专家评审，对评估和评分标准的有效性进行了五部分论证。数据来源包括未来教师的背景和人口统计信息、认知访谈、调查、教学内容知识（CKT）工具的得分、开发的绩效任务的表现和得分、丹尼尔森教学框架观察协议的讨论得分，以及对未来教师的案例研究访谈。项目团队还将与教师教育者进行面谈，并与未来的教师及其教师教育者进行课堂汇报。这项研究将检查每位教师在干预前和干预后的两项总结性表现任务上的得分，并将在三项形成性任务中寻找成长的证据。采用线性回归模型来了解教师的CKT得分、干预前绩效任务得分、小组分配和干预后绩效任务得分之间的关系。对24名案例研究教师的定性数据进行编码的扎根理论方法、对汇报会议的观察以及对教师教育工作者的访谈将产生描述性用例，说明这些工具如何支持未来的教师学习如何促进以科学和数学论证为重点的讨论。Mursion将在其网站上专门为这个项目开发一个网页，允许团队将新的基于绩效的任务、评分标准和模拟环境中的绩效示例发布给教师、教育工作者、教育研究人员和政策制定者，并收集他们的反馈，这些反馈可以作为改进工具及其使用的另一个信息源。研究结果也将通过更传统的方式传播，例如在同行评议的研究和从业者期刊上发表论文以及在会议上发表演讲。

There is widespread recognition in educational literatures that academic discourse is important for supporting students' developing understanding in the disciplines of science and mathematics. College and career-ready standards also call for attention to supporting students' learning of how to think and communicate like disciplinary experts. The teaching practice of orchestrating classroom discussion is intended to support students in obtaining higher levels of academic achievement but also to support students' participation in a democratic society. However, research has found that teachers--particularly novice teachers--struggle to orchestrate discussion effectively for science and mathematics. The investigators of this project hypothesize that opportunities to 1) practice orchestrating discussions in simulated classroom environments; 2) receive constructive feedback on their practice; and 3) reflect on that feedback and their experiences with peers and teacher educators, develops preservice teachers' abilities to lead productive classroom discussion. This may allow them to be more effective at orchestrating discussion when they begin teaching real students in science and mathematics classrooms. The project team, which includes investigators from Educational Testing Service (ETS) and software engineers at Mursion, will develop, pilot, and validate eight discussion-oriented performance tasks that will be embedded in an online simulated classroom environment. The resulting research and development products could be used nationwide in teacher preparation and professional development settings to assess and develop teachers' ability to support classroom discussion in science and mathematics.The Discovery Research K-12 (DRK-12) program seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models, and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This Early Stage Design and Development project will 1) iteratively develop, pilot, and refine eight science and mathematics discussion-oriented performance tasks (six formative, two summative), scoring rubrics, and rater training materials; 2) deploy the intervention in four university sites, collecting data from 240 prospective teachers in both treatment and business-as-usual courses; and 3) use data analyses and expert review to build a five-part argument for the validity of the assessment and scoring rubrics. Data sources include prospective teachers' background and demographic information, cognitive interviews, surveys, scores on content knowledge for teaching (CKT) instruments, performance and scores on the developed performance tasks, discussion scores on Danielson's Framework for Teaching observation protocol, and case study interviews with prospective teachers. The project team will also conduct interviews with teacher educators and observe classroom debrief sessions with prospective teachers and their teacher educators. The research will examine each teacher's scores on two summative performance tasks administered pre- and post-intervention and will look for evidence of growth across three formative tasks. Linear regression models will be used to understand relationships among teachers' CKT scores, pre-intervention performance task scores, group assignment, and post-intervention performance task scores. A grounded theory approach to coding qualitative data of 24 case study teachers, observations of debrief sessions, and interviews with teacher educators will generate descriptive use cases, illustrating how the tools can support prospective teachers in learning how to facilitate discussions focused on science and mathematics argumentation. Mursion will develop a webpage on its website dedicated to this project that will allow the team to post the new performance-based tasks, scoring rubrics, and examples of performance in the simulated environment for teacher educators, educational researchers, and policy makers and collect feedback from them that can be used as another information source for refining tools and their use. Research findings will also be disseminated by more traditional means, such as papers in peer-reviewed research and practitioner journals and conference presentations.