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，人们普遍认为，学术话语对于支持学生对科学和数学学科的理解具有重要意义。为大学和职业做好准备的标准也呼吁关注支持学生学习如何像纪律专家那样思考和沟通。安排课堂讨论的教学实践是为了支持学生取得更高水平的学术成就，也是为了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--很难有效地安排科学和数学的讨论。该项目的研究人员假设，有机会1)在模拟课堂环境中练习组织讨论；2)收到关于他们练习的建设性反馈；3)反思反馈以及他们与同行和教师教育工作者的经验，发展职前教师领导富有成效的课堂讨论的能力。这可能会让他们在开始在科学和数学课堂上教授真正的学生时，更有效地安排讨论。该项目团队包括教育测试服务(ETS)的调查人员和Mursion的软件工程师，他们将开发、试验和验证八个面向讨论的性能任务，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准备和专业发展环境，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)计划旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模式和工具，显著提高K-12学前班学生和教师的科学、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努力的基础上，这些研究和开发工作为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验证明。这个早期的设计和开发项目将1)反复开发、试验和改进8个面向科学和数学讨论的绩效任务(6个形成性任务，2个终结性任务)、评分规则和评分员培训材料；2)在四个大学站点部署干预措施，收集240名未来教师在治疗和照常课程中的数据；以及3)使用数据分析和专家评审来构建评估和评分规则有效性的五部分论证。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)工具的分数、制定的绩效任务的表现和分数、丹尼尔森教学观察框架的讨论分数以及对未来教师的个案研究访谈。项目小组还将与教师教育工作者进行面谈，并观察与未来教师及其教师教育工作者的课堂汇报会议。这项研究将检查每位教师在干预前和干预后执行的两项终结性表现任务上的得分，并将寻找三项形成性任务中成长的证据。本研究将利用线性回归模型来了解教师CKT分数、干预前绩效任务分数、小组分配与干预后绩效任务分数之间的关系。对24名案例研究教师的质量数据进行编码的扎根理论方法、汇报会议的观察以及对教师教育工作者的采访将产生描述性的用例，说明这些工具如何支持未来的教师学习如何促进专注于科学和数学辩论的讨论。Mursion将在其网站上开发一个专门用于该项目的网页，使团队能够为教师教育工作者、教育研究人员和政策制定者发布新的基于绩效的任务、评分规则和模拟环境中的绩效范例，并收集他们的反馈，这些反馈可以用作改进工具及其使用的另一个信息源。研究结果还将通过更传统的方式传播，例如在同行评议的研究和从业人员期刊上发表论文，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.