A Team-Based Model for Co-Adapting Existing Middle-School Science Curricula for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Learners

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Today’s schools are experiencing increasing cultural and linguistic diversity and facing the challenge of creating meaningful connections between school science and student lived experiences outside of school. Middle school is a critical time to provide fundamental knowledge and encourage interest in STEM careers. In order to best impact learners during this critical period, science teachers need improved models to support the development and delivery of relevant curriculum materials to better serve all students in their classrooms. Highly supported design teams consisting of researchers, teachers, and both school and district science specialists will co-adapt existing district-generated science units to integrate socially and culturally relevant science practices and draw on students' diverse cultural and language practices as strengths. This series of studies will evaluate student impact as well as if and how science curricular co-design experiences impact teaching and productive collaboration within the schools. This project will provide foundational knowledge for the development of a teacher-researcher co-design model.This study will focus on middle school grades and take place in a highly diverse urban school district in Texas in which 44% of the student population are emergent bilinguals. In this four-year project, the co-design teams will follow design-based research (DBR) models to iteratively develop, implement, refine, and test a model that aims to adapt existing standards-based, grades 6-8 science district curricular units. The project will support two cohorts of grades 6-8 teachers to co-adapt multiple science units using a cascade approach. In year 1, 12 cohort 1 teachers (four in each grade) will co-design, implement, and refine a unit per grade level. In year 2, the units from year 1 will be used as a model to help cohort 2 of 12 additional teachers (four in each grade) to co-design a second set of units. In year 3, both cohorts will revise the previously designed units and adapt additional units. In year 4, cohort 1 teachers will be followed up with the strategic decreasing of scaffolding, and cohort 2 teachers will continue another co-design cycle. Multiple quantitative and qualitative data sources will be collected to inform the iterative development of co-design cycles and explore ways to leverage students’ cultural and language practices in lesson design and implementation, as well as to assess opportunities and constraints teachers encounter during curriculum adaptation. Teacher outcomes (beliefs about teaching science for diversity, curriculum development capacity, and instructional practices) and student outcomes (science learning and use of science language) will also be assessed. The resulting theory-based and field-tested co-design model along with the revised and tested unit/lesson plans, tools and strategies will be shared with school districts and researchers interested in adapting these resources to their contexts. This project is funded by NSF’s Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) program. The DRK-12 program seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computer science (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of STEM education innovations and approaches.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.