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，但与郊区和城市的教师相比，农村教师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出农村学生有机会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，特别是与下一代科学标准（NGSS）相一致的标准。为了促进所有学生学习科学的公平机会，项目团队将设计并提供一门在线课程，以支持6至12年级的农村教师教授科学。本课程将着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。虽然农村学生的家庭、社区和自然环境中充满了可以使科学变得生动的思想和经验，但科学概念往往远离农村学生的生活。当教师将评估和教学与学生的日常生活联系起来时，学生对科学的兴趣和认同就会增强。反过来，这可以引导更多的学生在高中毕业后追求科学和应用科学领域，拓宽STEM管道。此外，学生们也为在社区中作为被赋权的公民参与科学做好了更好的准备。本研究侧重于与教师合作开发评估实践，不仅关注科学思想、实践和跨领域概念这三个NGSS维度，还增加了两个维度；教师将开发学生感兴趣的评估任务，并促进学生科学身份的发展。研究人员将其称为5D评估。科罗拉多大学博尔德分校（Colorado University Boulder）和BSCS Science Learning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中的5D评估的在线课程序列。这项研究将分三个阶段进行：一项快速人种学研究，评估为各种农村社区服务的教师的需求；一项研究，研究教师使用在线平台进行专业学习的情况；最后一项实验研究，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名教师参加在线课程的专业发展，并通过课堂录像和调查收集参与课程的教师实施课程理念的数据，以捕捉他们不断变化的实践。在项目的第三年，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。课程的影响将通过调查问卷来衡量，调查问卷涉及他们对NGSS教学的愿景和自我报告的教学实践；课堂观察;还有，教师构建的学生评估。学生的成果将通过科学兴趣和认同调查来衡量，并通过学生作业产品的考试来证明学生使用科学和工程建模实践的能力，这是所有NGSS科学课堂都可能遇到的实践。该项目将确定在何种条件下，学习5D评估任务设计可以支持改进教学，提高学生对科学和工程的兴趣，并增加学生的学习机会。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，教师的参与将显著提高学生对科学的兴趣和认同，而这些影响将由教师的成果来调节。最后，研究人员假设，农村社区的人口变量之间的影响是公平的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.