Collaborative Research: Assessing, Validating and Developing Content Knowledge for Teaching Energy

本项目开发了一种工具，用于测量教师在以机械能为重点的高中课堂教学中需要教授的关于能量的内容知识。有重要的研究表明，教师的内容知识不同于其他专业的人需要了解的特定领域，如数学，而力学教学能量的内容知识的发展是这些研究和发展努力的延伸。该项目将仪器的开发嵌入到测量课堂物理教学有效性的计划中，并基于其作为旨在提高教师对物理能量理解的专业发展项目的衡量标准，为最终评估提供了强有力的有效性论证。课题组由物理专家、评价专家和物理课堂教学专家组成。该合作项目包括罗格斯大学、缅因大学、西雅图太平洋大学、facet Innovation和教育测试服务中心的研究人员。本项目采用盖茨基金会资助的有效教学措施项目中开发的有效教学框架，构建机械能教学的理论框架。该框架包括基于课堂教学实践的项目和任务，这些项目和任务可以确定教师对学科知识和支持学生学习的适当教学过程的理解程度。一个强有力的验证框架是研究的一个要素，该框架基于为研究开发的项目与观察、视频分析和课堂上的人工制品之间的关系的多条证据。该研究的另一个要素是检查多个心理测量证据线，以确定工具的可靠性和从中得出的推论的有效性。由此产生的工具将用于测量教师内容知识的变化，以在专业发展计划中进行教学，作为另一个验证来源。教师教学内容知识的提升是教师专业发展的重要中介目标。如果没有对教师知识差距的充分了解和通过专业发展改善的确切证据，不同的专业发展项目就不可能产生效果。该项目开发了一个教师评估工具开发模型，解决了《下一代科学标准》中的一个跨领域主题，并为使这些标准在课堂上成为现实所需的研究和评估过程提供了一个重要工具。在多个项目中使用这些工具的结果为地方、州和联邦各级的政策决策提供了信息。

This project develops an instrument to measure the content knowledge that teachers need to teach about energy in high school classroom instruction that focuses on mechanical energy. There is significant research that indicates that teacher content knowledge differs from what people in other professions need to know about particular domains such as mathematics, and the development of a Content Knowledge of Teaching Energy in mechanics is an extension of those research and development efforts. The project embeds the development of the instrument in a program of measuring effective teaching of physics in the classroom and develops a strong validity argument for the resulting assessment based on its use as a measure in a professional development project that intends to improve teachers' understanding of energy in physics. The research team consists of experts in physics, assessment and classroom teaching of physics. The collaborative project includes researchers at Rutgers, University of Maine, Seattle Pacific University, Facets Innovation, and the Educational Testing Service.The project uses a framework for effective teaching developed in the Measures of Effective Teaching project funded by the Gates Foundation to construct a theoretical framework for the teaching of mechanical energy. That framework includes items and tasks based on instructional practices in the classroom that can identify the extent to which the teacher understands both the disciplinary knowledge and the appropriate teaching processes that support student learning. A strong framework of validation based on multiple lines of evidence of the relationship between the items developed for the study and observations, analysis of video, and artifacts from the classroom is one element of the study. Another element of the study examines multiple psychometric lines of evidence to determine the reliability of the instruments and the validity of the inferences drawn from them. The resulting instruments will be used in the measurement of changes of teacher content knowledge for teaching in professional development programs as another source of validation.The improvement of teachers' content knowledge for teaching is an important intermediary goal of professional development of teachers. Without adequate understanding of the gaps in teacher knowledge and precise evidence of the improvement through professional development, the efficacy of different professional development projects is not possible. This project develops a model of teacher assessment instrument development that addresses a cross-cutting theme in the Next Generation Science Standards and contributes an important tool to the research and evaluation processes that are needed to make those standards a reality in the classroom. Findings from the use of the instruments across multiple projects inform policy decisions on local, state and federal levels.