Preparing Teachers to Design Tasks to Support, Engage, and Assess Science Learning in Rural Schools

在全国范围内，三分之一的美国学生就读于农村或偏远地区的学校，但农村教师与郊区和城市教师相比，在一起工作和从事专业学习的机会更少。这反过来又可以反映农村学生学习国家标准所要求的高质量，最新的科学思想，实践和概念的机会，特别是那些与下一代科学标准（NGSS）相一致的科学思想，实践和概念。为了促进所有学生学习科学的公平机会，项目小组将设计和提供一个在线课程，以支持在6-12年级教授科学的农村教师。该课程将侧重于改善课堂科学评估实践和教学，以满足农村教育工作者及其学生的独特需求。农村学生的生活中往往没有科学概念，尽管他们的家庭、社区和自然环境充满了可以使科学变得生动的想法和经验。当教师将评估和指导与学生的日常生活联系起来时，学生对科学的兴趣和认同感就会增强。反过来，这可以引导更多的学生追求高中以外的科学和应用科学领域，以拓宽STEM管道。此外，学生更好地准备参与科学在他们的社区作为赋权公民。本研究的重点是与教师合作开发评估实践，不仅关注科学思想，实践和交叉概念的三个NGSS维度，它还增加了两个维度;教师将开发学生感兴趣的评估任务，并促进他们的科学身份的发展。研究人员称之为5D评估。科罗拉多大学博尔德分校和BSCS科学学习学院的研究人员将使用基于设计的实施研究来合作设计一个针对科学5D评估的在线课程序列。这项研究将分三个阶段进行：快速人种学研究，以评估服务于各种农村社区的教师的需求;研究教师使用在线平台进行专业学习的情况;最后是实验研究，以研究在线课程对教师和学生成果的影响。研究人员将招募10名教师参加网上专业发展课程，并通过课堂录像和调查收集参与教师实施课程理念的数据，以了解他们不断变化的做法。在该项目的第三年，研究人员将对70名参加重新设计的在线课程的中学科学教师进行影响研究，并将他们的结果与“一切照旧”的情况进行比较。课程的影响将通过问卷调查来衡量，这些问卷调查涉及他们对NGSS教学的看法和自我报告的教学实践;课堂观察;以及教师构建的学生评估。学生的成果将使用科学兴趣和身份调查测量，并展示学生的能力，使用建模的科学和工程实践的学生工作产品的考试，实践可能会遇到在所有NGSS科学教室。该项目将确定学习5D评估任务设计的条件，以支持教学改进，提高学生对科学和工程的兴趣，并增强学生的学习机会。研究人员假设，在线课程将对教师的视野，课堂实践以及他们对高质量5D任务的使用产生积极影响。他们还假设，教师的参与将导致学生对科学的兴趣和认同感显着增加，这些影响将通过教师的成果来介导。最后，研究人员假设，在农村社区的人口变量的影响将是公平的。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Nationally, a third of US students attend rural or remote schools, yet rural teachers receive fewer opportunities to work together and engage in professional learning than their suburban and urban counterparts. This, in turn, can reflect on the opportunities for rural students to learn the high quality, up-to-date science ideas, practices, and concepts that are required by state standards, especially those aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). To advance equitable opportunities for all students to learn science, the project team will design and provide an online course to support rural teachers who teach science in grades 6-12. The course will focus on improving classroom science assessment practices and instruction to meet the unique needs of rural educators and their students. Too often, science concepts are removed from the lives of rural students, although their homes, communities and natural environments are filled with ideas and experiences that can make science come alive. When teachers link assessment and instruction to students’ everyday lives, students have enhanced interest in and identification with science. This, in turn, can lead more students to pursue science and applied science fields beyond high school, to broaden the STEM pipeline. In addition, students are better prepared to participate in science in their communities as empowered citizens. This study focuses on working with teachers to develop assessment practices that not only focus on the three NGSS dimensions of science ideas, practices and cross-cutting concepts, it also adds two more dimensions; teachers will develop assessment tasks interesting to students, and promote the development of their science identities. The researchers refer to this as 5D assessment.Researchers at Colorado University Boulder and BSCS Science Learning will use design-based implementation research to collaboratively design an online course sequence that targets 5D assessment in science. The study will proceed in three phases: a rapid ethnographic study to assess the needs of teachers serving a variety of rural communities, a study of teachers’ use of an online platform for their professional learning, and lastly an experimental study to research the effects of the online course on teacher and student outcomes. Researchers will recruit 10 teachers to take the on-line course for the professional development and collect data on participating teachers’ implementation of the course ideas through classroom videotaping and surveys designed to capture their changing practices. In the third year of the project, researchers will conduct an impact study with 70 secondary science teachers taking the re-designed on-line course, and compare their outcomes with a “business-as-usual” condition. The impact of course will be measured by questionnaires that address their vision for teaching the NGSS and self-reported instructional practices; classroom observations; and, teacher-constructed student assessments. Student outcomes will be measured using science interest and identity surveys, and an examination of student work products that demonstrate students’ ability to use the science and engineering practice of modeling, a practice likely to be encountered in all NGSS science classrooms. The project will identify conditions under which learning about 5D assessment task design can support instructional improvement, increase student interest in science and engineering, and enhance students’ opportunities to learn. The researchers hypothesize that the online program will have a positive impact on teachers’ vision, classroom practices, and their use of high-quality 5D tasks. They also hypothesize that teacher participation will result in significant increases in student interest in and identification with science, and that these effects will be mediated by teacher outcomes. Finally, the researchers hypothesize that effects will be equitable across demographic variables in rural communities.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.