COVID Connects Us: Nurturing Novice Teachers’ Justice Science Teaching Identities

新冠病毒将我们联系在一起：培养新手教师——正义科学教学身份

• 批准号: 2101217
• 负责人: April Luehmann
• 金额: $ 149.22万
• 依托单位: University of Rochester
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-07-01 至 2024-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2101217&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: COVID; Connects; Us; Nurturing; Novice

This project relates to two contemporary concerns in the US: the devastation felt by racial and ethnic minoritized communities during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the challenges states face as they strategically navigate the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards. These concerns necessitate a shift in the culture of science classrooms to align with the following findings from current research on learning. (a) Students are best motivated when they need to explain real world events and solve problems that are meaningful to them. (b) When students develop explanations of these real-world events or societal problems and are allowed to participate in creative ways, they can develop deep understandings of core science ideas similar to that of scientists and engineers. (c) Students need to develop a critical lens about what science is studied, how it is studied, and who is left out of what is studied to understand how science is impacted by issues of power and to engage in more just forms of participation. Realizing these cultural transformations in science classrooms will require teachers to develop professional identities that are justice-, student- and culture-centered. In COVID Connects Us, the project team investigates the challenges of learning how to support justice-centered ambitious science teaching (JuST). The project team will partner with networks of secondary science teachers as they first implement a common unit aimed at engaging youth in science and engineering practices in ways that are culturally-sustaining, focused on explanation-construction and intentionally anti-oppressive. The teachers will then use their shared experiences to revise future instruction in ways that are justice-centered and that engage students in the ways research suggests is important for their learning. The goals of this three-year project center on developing and understanding core culture-setting teaching routines that can serve as powerful footholds to realize cultural shifts in science classrooms. The project team will collect and analyze teacher narratives to study the impact of two core and focal teacher supports on participating teachers’ professional identity development as practitioners of JuST practices. The supports include 1) a culture setting unit that all teachers will implement on the science of COVID; and 2) teachers’ engagement in a network of learning communities. During each of the first two academic years of the project, about 20 learning communities made up of four teachers in three different sites will engage in design-based implementation research cycles. These learning communities will collectively study videos of their teaching and samples of student-work to understand and address the challenges of JuST practices. Expected contributions of the study include: (a) a set of JuST routines that teachers find to be effective across curricular units; (b) exemplar JuST units including, but not limited to, the initial unit on the science of COVID; (c) research-based findings about how science educators develop critical consciousness related to disciplinary racism and practices that support students’ in developing the same; and d) vignettes and in-depth case studies of teachers’ development of JuST identities.The Discovery Research preK-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. 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.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.

该项目涉及美国当前的两个问题：在COVID-19大流行期间种族和族裔少数群体所感受到的破坏;以及各州在战略上引导采用下一代科学标准时所面临的挑战。这些问题需要改变科学课堂的文化，以符合当前学习研究的以下发现。(a)当学生需要解释真实的世界事件和解决对他们有意义的问题时，他们的动机最好。(b)当学生开发这些现实世界的事件或社会问题的解释，并允许以创造性的方式参与，他们可以开发类似的科学家和工程师的核心科学思想的深刻理解。(c)学生需要培养一种批判性的透镜，了解研究什么科学，如何研究科学，以及谁被排除在研究对象之外，以了解科学如何受到权力问题的影响，并参与更公正的参与形式。在科学课堂上实现这些文化转变将需要教师发展以正义、学生和文化为中心的专业身份。 在COVID Connects Us中，项目团队调查了学习如何支持以正义为中心的雄心勃勃的科学教学（Justice Centered Ambiguous Science Teaching，简称JustST）的挑战。该项目小组将与中学科学教师网络合作，因为他们首先实施一个共同的单位，旨在以文化可持续的方式让青年参与科学和工程实践，重点是净化建设和故意反压迫。然后，教师们将利用他们分享的经验，以公正为中心的方式修改未来的教学，并让学生参与研究表明对他们的学习很重要的方式。这个为期三年的项目的目标是开发和理解核心文化设置的教学程序，可以作为强大的立足点，实现科学课堂的文化转变。项目团队将收集和分析教师的叙述，以研究两个核心和焦点教师支持参与教师的专业身份发展的影响，作为实践者的公正的做法。这些支持包括1）所有教师将实施的关于COVID科学的文化设置单元;以及2）教师参与学习社区网络。 在该项目的前两个学年的每一年，大约20个学习社区组成的四个教师在三个不同的网站将从事基于设计的实施研究周期。这些学习社区将共同研究他们的教学视频和学生工作样本，以了解和解决JustST实践的挑战。这项研究的预期贡献包括：（a）一套教师认为在各课程单元中有效的JustST惯例;（B）JustST示范单元，包括但不限于关于新冠肺炎科学的初始单元;（c）关于科学教育工作者如何培养与学科种族主义有关的批判意识以及支持学生培养这种意识的做法的基于研究的发现;发现研究preK-12计划（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高preK-12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项目中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究以及为拟议项目提供理论和经验依据的先前研究和开发工作的基础上。该奖项反映了NSF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。