Preparing Science Teachers To Engage Multilingual Learners in Scientific Argumentation Through Mixed-Reality Simulations

多语言学习者是美国增长最快的学生群体。因此，在国家科学评价中表现不佳令人担忧。尽管存在这种担忧，但很少有教师表示愿意让他们参与科学教学。本项目旨在帮助科学教师提高他们的知识、技能和效能，以促进多语言学习者参与科学论证，这是科学教育中的一项基本技能。教授科学论证是至关重要的，因为它使学生能够表达自己的想法，做出决定并解决日常生活中的问题。要让多语种学习者进行科学论证，这就要求教师在关注语言的同时，能够引出他们的思维。教师必须注意和评估多语言学生的科学知识和语言能力，以确定如何最好地帮助学生建立科学知识和扩大他们的语言技能。具体到科学论证，引导学生思考可以帮助教育者引导学生发展和加强他们的论点。该项目旨在帮助科学教师候选人通过混合现实模拟教与学来学习如何做到这一点。该项目的目标是：(1)确定师生互动中的基本要素，这些要素有助于引导学生思考，以提高中学多语言学习者的科学论证能力；(2)探索混合现实模拟作为职前科学教师培训的一部分的初步效果、可接受性和可行性。师生互动的基本要素包括对学生的科学知识和语言能力进行抽样，以便在现有框架内进行形成性反应，从而引出科学论点的构建和批评，以满足多语言学习者的特定语言需求。这些要素的识别将为成功标准的制定提供信息，这些标准可用于评估教师候选人的模拟记录，并向他们提供反馈，以促进多语言学习者之间的科学论证。作为本研究的一部分，将制定促进多语言学习者参与科学论证的成功任务和标准。该研究将使用收敛并行混合方法设计来开发和测试用于评估模拟和向教师候选人提供反馈的工具的评分者之间的可靠性。这项研究有可能促进对如何支持科学教学质量的认识和理解，同时在包容多语言学习者方面也是公平的。这些研究在科学教育、教师教育和多语言学习者的教与学领域都具有重要的意义。最重要的可能是它在跨学科（即科学和第二语言习得）的基础协作工作中的作用，这些工作支持在真实和复杂的环境中实现社会正义。该项目得到了美国国家科学基金会EDU STEM教育研究核心研究能力建设（ECR: BCSER）项目的支持，该项目旨在培养研究者开展高质量STEM教育研究的能力。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。

Multilingual learners are the fastest growing student population in the United States. Therefore, it is concerning that they have shown poor performance on national science assessments. Despite this concern, few teachers report feeling prepared to engage them in science instruction. This project aims to prepare science teachers to increase their knowledge, skill and efficacy in facilitating multilingual learners' engagement in scientific argumentation, which is an essential skill in science education. Teaching scientific argumentation is critical because it empowers students to express their thoughts, make decisions and solve problems in daily life. For multilingual learners to engage in scientific argumentation, this requires teachers to be able to elicit their thinking while also paying attention to language. Teachers must note and evaluate multilingual students' science knowledge and their language abilities in order to determine how to best help students build on scientific knowledge and amplify their language skills. Specific to scientific argumentation, eliciting student thinking can help educators guide students through the process of developing and strengthening their arguments. This project aims to help science teacher candidates learn how to do this through mixed-reality simulations of teaching and learning.The goals of this project are (1) to identify the essential elements in teacher–student interactions that help elicit student thinking to improve scientific argumentation among secondary multilingual learners and (2) to explore the preliminary effects, acceptability, and feasibility of mixed-reality simulations as part of the training of pre-service science teachers. The essential elements in teacher-student interactions involve the sampling of students’ scientific knowledge and linguistic abilities to engage in formative responses within existing frameworks for eliciting the construction and critique of scientific arguments to address multilingual learners’ specific linguistic needs. The identification of these elements will inform the development of criteria for success that can be used to assess teacher candidates’ recorded simulations and provide them with feedback on their facilitation of scientific argumentation among multilingual learners. As part of this study, tasks and criteria for success for the facilitation of multilingual learners’ engagement in scientific argumentation will be developed. The study will use a convergent parallel mixed methods design to develop and test the inter-rater reliability of the tools used to rate the simulations and to provide feedback to teacher candidates. This research has the potential to advance knowledge and understanding of how to support science teaching quality that is also equitable in its inclusion of multilingual learners. Such studies have important implications across the field of science education, teacher education, and the teaching and learning of multilingual learners. Most important perhaps is its role in foundational collaborative work across disciplines (i.e., science and second language acquisition) that supports the enactment of social justice in authentic and complex environments.The project is supported by NSF’s EDU Core Research Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program, which is designed to build investigators’ capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research.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.