Moving beyond pedagogy: Developing elementary teachers' adaptive expertise in using the epistemic complexity of science

探索研究K-12计划(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具(RMT)，显著提高K-12学龄前学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)方面的学习和教学。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。下一代科学标准(NGSS)强调科学知识和科学实践的整合，承认科学课堂是复杂的学习环境。要达到这一期望，教师需要超越传统的实践程序，成为适应性专家，能够调整他们的教学，在不同的课堂情景中最大限度地学习。具有适应性专业知识的教师被定义为能够在教学前、教学中和教学后自我评估和战略性调整决策的人。要成为适应性专家，教师必须了解科学知识发展的基本方式，并单独和集体利用论点、语言和对话环境作为学习科学的工具，发展与之相关的知识和实践。为了有效地使用这些工具，教师需要从将科学教学视为通过例行公事转移或复制知识，转变为让学生参与更基于认知的学习方法。教师如何培养适应NGSS学习环境的专业知识仍鲜为人知。这个项目将考察这些学习工具和教师定向之间的复杂关系，使教师能够在多年的专业发展计划过程中发展适应性专业知识。该项目将与爱荷华州和阿拉巴马州的150名3-5年级教师合作，实施一项为期三年的专业发展计划，以帮助教师发展适应性专业知识。通过实施注重发展适应能力的以辩论为基础的探究方法，教师将得到支持，使他们的专业知识从常规转向适应能力。项目数据将包括教师对该方法的实施情况，他们对科学论点的理解，以及他们转变认知取向的情况。该项目将审查选定的教师案例研究，以更好地了解适应性专门知识发展的差异。该项目的成果将是一个适应性专门知识的模型，在职和职前教育工作者可以利用它来推动教师实践向适应性专门知识转变。其目的是设计将适应性专业知识传授给STEM学生的方法。混合方法项目将使用大规模量化数据，将分析与重点放在理解复杂性上。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) 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 (RMTs). 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. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emphasize the integration of scientific knowledge and the practices of science, a recognition that science classrooms are complex learning environments. Meeting this expectation requires teachers to move beyond traditional routines of practice to become adaptive experts who can adjust their teaching to maximize learning in varied classroom situations. A teacher who has adaptive expertise is defined as someone who can self-assess and strategically adjust decision-making before, during and after teaching episodes. To become adaptive experts, teachers must understand the foundational ways that scientific knowledge is advanced and develop knowledge of, and practices related to, using argument, language, and dialogical environments--individually and collectively--as tools for learning science. To effectively use these tools requires teachers to shift from viewing science teaching as the transfer or replication of knowledge through routines of practices to one in which students are participants in a more cognitively based approach to learning. How teachers develop adaptive expertise for NGSS-aligned learning environments is still little understood. This project will examine the complex nature of the relationship between these learning tools and teacher orientation that enables teachers to develop adaptive expertise over the course of a multi-year professional development program.The project will work with 150 Grade 3-5 teachers in Iowa and Alabama to implement a three-year professional development program to assist teachers develop adaptive expertise. Through implementation of an argument-based inquiry approach focused on development of adaptiveness, teachers will be supported as they shift their expertise from routine to adaptiveness. Project data will include teachers' implementation of the approach, their understanding of science argument, and their shifting epistemic orientation. The project will examine selected case studies of teachers to better understand the variations in development of adaptive expertise. The project outcome will be a model of adaptive expertise that can be used by in-service and pre-service educators to advance teacher practices towards adaptive expertise. The aim is to design ways to transfer adaptive expertise to students in STEM. The mixed-method project will integrate analyses with a focus on understanding complexity, using large-scale quantitative data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.