Building Coherence in STEM Learning Opportunities for Pre-Service Elementary Teachers across Disciplinary Boundaries

该项目将解决STEM教师教育面临的一个根本性挑战。虽然越来越多的证据表明，小学教师在塑造学生在STEM领域的学习、兴趣、动机和坚持方面发挥着核心作用，但教师面临着许多挑战，包括不发达的内容知识，对STEM教学准备不足和焦虑的感觉，以及在教师准备计划中有限的内容和方法课程。对教师教育的研究一再记录了教师教育项目缺乏一致性和碎片化的挑战，这些挑战进一步加剧了这些问题。近年来，数学和科学教育的改革（共同核心国家数学标准-CCSSM和下一代科学标准-NGSS）已经明确要求STEM学科之间的一致性。STEM课程跨越不同学科和院系（如教育、科学和数学），这一挑战进一步复杂化。先前围绕共同愿景组织教师教育的努力通常侧重于在整个项目、单一学科或跨机构的大规模项目中建立一致性。这个改善本科STEM教育（IUSE）项目在参与学生学习的轨道上，旨在为小学职前教师（pst）建立STEM学习机会的智力一致性，通过一套8个重新设计的数学和科学内容课程以及数学、科学和技术方法课程。该项目将促进对本科初级pst如何以连贯和相互联系的方式学习STEM内容知识、教学STEM的教学实践以及对公平和正义的关注的理解。该项目将涉及犹他大学教育学院和科学学院的一个教师工作组，他们将共同为小学教师重新设计和实施所有STEM内容和方法课程，目标是为小学pst建立一致性。该项目由IUSE计划和Robert Noyce教师奖学金计划资助，将产生结果，有助于在连贯和严格的小学教师准备模式中开辟对STEM领域之间学科联系的关注，为所有小学生在STEM学习中提供成功。该项目旨在有意识地利用STEM领域之间的联系，在跨学科和学院的内容和方法课程中建立连贯和严格的准备。重点关注两个关键学科联系（表述和论证），它们是课堂上产生核心知识的机会，并与当前的数学和科学改革保持一致，将成为关键支柱。该项目将在小学教师教育中建立STEM学科的一致性，以支持雄心勃勃的教学的发展，这些教学在智力上雄心勃勃地针对小学儿童的STEM学习目标，在社会上雄心勃勃地为不同民族、种族、社会经济地位、语言和性别群体的所有学生服务。雄心勃勃的STEM教学支持所有学生发展对数学和科学大思想的概念性理解，解决复杂问题，并参与真正的学科实践，如CCSSM（例如，理解问题并坚持解决问题）和NGSS（例如，参与证据论证）中规定的那些。这个基于设计的研究项目将测试、完善和改进关于小学pst在八门重新设计和实施的课程背景下学习内容和教学的具体推测，这将在项目的整个生命周期内影响大约200名小学教师和他们随后的K-12学生。具体而言，该项目将解决：(1)通过关注表征和论证来实现雄心勃勃的STEM教学的连贯愿景如何为小学pst提供富有成效的STEM学习机会，以及(2)通过关注表征和论证来体验和学习制定雄心勃勃的STEM教学的连贯愿景如何影响小学pst的(a) STEM教学的内容知识，(b)雄心勃勃的STEM教学的教学实践技能。(c) STEM教学中围绕公平和正义的原则和倾向。该项目的成果将通过以下方式促进知识的发展：(1)越来越多的关于如何培养STEM学生学习STEM内容知识、STEM教学的教学实践以及STEM教学中公平和正义的原则和倾向的文献；(2)在连贯而严谨的初级PST准备模式中，关注STEM领域之间的学科联系，从而加强围绕STEM内容和教学的PST学习机会；(3)如何在STEM PST项目中建立学科一致性的双管齐下的路线图。

This project will address a fundamental challenge in STEM teacher education. While growing evidence shows that elementary teachers play a central role in shaping their students' learning, interests, motivations, and persistence in STEM fields, teachers face many challenges including underdeveloped content knowledge, feelings of being underprepared and anxious about teaching STEM, and a limited number of content and methods courses during their teacher preparation program. Research on teacher education has repeatedly documented challenges with a lack of coherence and fragmentation in teacher education programs that further exacerbates these problems. In recent years, reforms in both mathematics and science education (Common Core State Standards for Mathematics--CCSSM and the Next Generation Science Standards--NGSS) have foregrounded and explicitly called for coherence across STEM disciplines. This challenge is further compounded by the fact that STEM coursework spans different disciplines and departments (e.g., education, science, and mathematics). Prior efforts to organize teacher education around a common vision have typically focused on building coherence in an entire program, in a single discipline, or at a large scale across institutions. This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project in the Engaged Student Learning track seeks to build intellectual coherence in STEM learning opportunities for elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) across a set of eight redesigned mathematics and science content courses and mathematics, science, and technology methods courses. This project will advance understanding of how undergraduate elementary PSTs learn STEM content knowledge, instructional practices for teaching STEM, and attention to equity and justice in a coherent and connected approach. This project will involve a working group of faculty from the College of Education and the College of Science at the University of Utah, who will collaboratively redesign and implement all STEM content and methods courses for elementary teachers with a goal of building coherence for elementary PSTs. This project, with funding from the IUSE program and the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, will produce results that will contribute to an opening up of the focus on disciplinary connections between STEM fields in a coherent and rigorous model of elementary teacher preparation for providing success for all elementary students in STEM learning. This project aims to deliberately leverage connections across STEM fields to build coherent and rigorous preparation in content and methods courses across disciplines and colleges. A focus on two key disciplinary connections (representations and arguments) that are situated as central knowledge generation opportunities in classrooms and align with current mathematics and science reforms, will function as key pillars. This project will build STEM disciplinary coherence in elementary teacher education to support the development of ambitious instruction, which is intellectually ambitious with respect to STEM learning goals for elementary children and socially ambitious with respect to serving all students across ethnic, racial, socioeconomic status, linguistic, and gender groups. Ambitious STEM instruction supports all students in developing conceptual understanding of big ideas in mathematics and science, solving complex problems, and engaging in authentic disciplinary practices such as those set out in the CCSSM (e.g., making sense of problems and persevering in solving them) and the NGSS (e.g., engaging in argument from evidence). This design-based research project will test, refine, and improve specific conjectures about the elementary PSTs' learning of content and instruction in the context of eight redesigned and implemented courses, which will impact approximately 200 elementary teachers and their subsequent K-12 students over the project's lifetime. Specifically, this project will address: (1) how a coherent vision of ambitious STEM instruction through a focus on representations and arguments affords productive STEM learning opportunities for elementary PSTs, and (2) how experiencing and learning to enact a coherent vision of ambitious STEM instruction through a focus on representations and arguments influence elementary PSTs' (a) content knowledge for teaching STEM, (b) skill with instructional practices for ambitious STEM teaching, and (c) principles and dispositions around equity and justice in STEM instruction. The results of this project will advance knowledge by contributing to: (1) the growing literature on how to foster PSTs' learning of STEM content knowledge, instructional practices for teaching STEM, and principles and dispositions around equity and justice in STEM instruction; (2) opening up a focus on disciplinary connections between STEM fields in a coherent and rigorous model of elementary PST preparation in ways that may strengthen PST learning opportunities around STEM content and teaching; and (3) a two-pronged roadmap for how to build disciplinary coherence in STEM PST programs.