Negotiating the Certification-to-Workplace Transition: What Helps Pre-service Middle-School Science Teacher Candidates Bring Responsive Teaching Practices to Their Classrooms?

马里兰大学帕克分校的中学数学和科学教学职前教师认证项目面临着其他数学和科学教师培训项目也面临的问题。该大学的中学数学与科学教师认证计划专注于帮助未来的教师学习如何启发和发展中学学生的常识知识和思维方式--这是一种模范教师使用的方法，并得到了关于K-12学生学习的研究的支持。许多未来的教师原则上接受这种教学方法，但一旦他们从认证课程毕业并成为专业教师，他们中的许多人很少以这种方式教学。该项目探讨了为什么会出现这种情况，目的是告知对认证计划的修改，以帮助教师更频繁、更全面地应用在认证计划中学到的有效教学实践。该项目由改善本科生STEM教育(IUSE)计划和罗伯特·诺伊斯教师奖学金计划资助，不仅将改进项目中研究的特定教师准备计划，还将改进数百个其他计划，这些计划强调帮助未来的教师学习类似的有效教学实践。更具体地说，上面提到的中学教师认证计划侧重于响应性教学--一套教师持续注意、关注、解释和回应学生想法的实质(而不仅仅是正确的)并相应地调整他们的教学的方法。越来越多的研究表明，响应性教学可以帮助不同的学生学习科学，越来越多的教师教育项目正试图支持新手教师的响应性教学实践。为了帮助职前教师(PST)学习响应性教学，中学教师认证计划让PST参与以实践为基础的教师教育的教育学：PST观察响应性教学的模型和表征，他们通过与虚拟学生虚拟化身的课堂练习来“近似”响应性教学，他们在早期的现场经验中在课堂上实施响应性教学。这项研究项目的目标是探索项目中的PST在多大程度上关注响应性教学的核心实践，并在他们的学生教学中以及在他们工作的头几年制定响应性教学实践。该项目采用定性案例研究方法，在从课程过渡到教学的过程中，对特定课程的案例研究和特定PST的纵向案例研究进行三角划分。收集的数据包括参与课程实践教学法的PST的录像，每个PST与化身的录音，PST的方案课程作业，对案例研究参与者的访谈，以及案例研究参与者在他们的学生教学和第一年教学中的观察和录像。这项Small-N探索性研究有助于阐明关于响应性教学准备的假设和解释，这将为未来大N多机构研究和未来针对个别PST项目的基于设计的研究提供信息。

The pre-service teacher certification program for middle school mathematics and science teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park, faces a problem also confronted by other mathematics and science teacher preparation programs. The University's Middle School Mathematics and Science Teacher Certification Program focuses on helping future teachers learn ways to elicit and build upon middle grades students' common-sense knowledge and ways of thinking -- an approach used by exemplary teachers and supported by research about K-12 students' learning. Many of the future teachers buy into this approach to teaching in principle, but once they graduate from the certification program and become professional teachers, many of them rarely if ever approach their teaching in this way. This project explores why this occurs, with the goal of informing modifications to the certification program that could help teachers apply, more frequently and more fully, effective teaching practices learned in their certification program. The project, funded by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program and the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, will inform improvements not only to the particular teacher preparation program studied in the project but to the hundreds of other programs that emphasize helping future teachers learn similar sets of effective teaching practices.More specifically, the Middle School Teacher Certification Program mentioned above focuses on responsive teaching -- a set of approaches in which teachers consistently notice, attend to, interpret, and respond to the substance (as opposed to just the correctness) of students' ideas and adjust their instruction accordingly. A growing body of research suggests that responsive teaching can help diverse students learn science, and a growing number of teacher education programs are attempting to support novice teachers' responsive teaching practices. To help pre-service teachers (PSTs) learn responsive teaching, the Middle School Teacher Certification Program engages PSTs in pedagogies of practice-based teacher education: PSTs observe models and representations of responsive teaching, they "approximate" responsive teaching by practicing with a classroom of virtual student "avatars," and they enact responsive teaching in lessons in their early field experiences. The goal of this research project is to explore the extent to which PSTs in the program focus on core practices of responsive teaching and enact responsive teaching practices in their student teaching as well as in their first years in the workforce. The project takes a qualitative case study approach, triangulating between cases studies of particular program courses and longitudinal case studies of particular PSTs as they navigate the transition from the program into teaching. The data collected includes video recordings of PSTs engaged in the practice-based pedagogies of the courses, recordings of each PST with the avatars, PSTs' program coursework, interviews with case-study participants, and observations and video recordings of case study participants in their student teaching and in their first year of teaching. This small-N exploratory study helps articulate hypotheses and explanations about preparation for responsive teaching that will inform future large-N multi-institutional research and future design-based research on individual PST programs.