Building Capacity for Science Standards through Networked Improvement Communities

科学领域的大学和职业准备标准对教育者来说既是挑战也是机遇。机遇在于为培养具备STEM技能的劳动力和具有科学素养的公民制定新标准的愿景。具体来说，这些标准明确了学生毕业时应该精通的重要内容和科学实践。不仅在内容和实践方面，而且在参与实践的内在语言要求方面，对学生的要求也更高。因此，对教师、教师教育工作者和更广泛的教育界提出了更多的要求。该项目汇集了教师、教师教育工作者、管理人员和研究人员的团队，探讨支持学习科学实践（如开发和使用科学模型，建立基于证据的科学解释和论证，交流发现等）的雄心勃勃的公平实践的发展，并为科学实践的特殊语言需求创造框架，特别是对英语学习者(Lee，Quinn & vald<s:1>, 2013)。研究人员正在实施一种被称为网络改进社区（NIC）的变革模型（Bryk, Gomez & Grunow, 2011）。这个社区将通过基于网络的技术基础设施将地方改进网络（由教师、教师教育者、管理人员和研究人员组成）联系起来，以支持不断改进严格和公平的课堂教学形式。林学院都在为高英语学习者群体工作，并致力于为所有学生改善科学教学。调查人员正在帮助LINs使用标准、雄心勃勃的教学实践的绩效进展以及学生在评估中的表现数据来定义问题空间。作为一个社区，调查人员利用这些资源来问：什么是有效的？为谁?在什么条件下呢？除了分享工具或培训教师开发人员外，NIC还致力于工具和实践的快速原型设计，并特别注重改善英语学习者的教学。网络改进社区为成员提供了分享和经验测试工具和其他课程资源的机会，以便产生实践和工具的生产性变化。该系统将加速教学实践和专业学习模式的发展，这些模式与科学领域的大学和职业准备标准相一致，并了解如何发展和维持专门以改进教学为导向的NICs。

The college and career readiness standards in science represent both a challenge and an opportunity for educators. The opportunity lies in the vision that new standards set for the creation of a STEM ready workforce and scientifically literate citizens. Specifically, the standards clarify important content and science practices that students should be proficient in by the time they graduate. The bar is set higher for students, not only in terms of the content and practices but also in terms of the inherent linguistic demands of participating in the practices. Consequently, more will be required of teachers, teacher educators and the broader education community. This project brings together teams of teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and researchers to inquire into the development of ambitious and equitable practices that support learning the scientific practices (such as developing and using scientific models, and building evidence-based scientific explanations and arguments, communicating findings, etc.) and creating scaffolds for the special language demands of the scientific practices, particularly for English Language Learners (Lee, Quinn &amp; Valdés, 2013). The researchers are implementing a model for change referred to as a Networked Improvement Community, or NIC (Bryk, Gomez &amp; Grunow, 2011). This community will link Local Improvement Networks (LINs are groups of teachers, teacher educators, administrators and researchers) through a web-based technological infrastructure to support the continual improvement of rigorous and equitable forms of classroom instruction. The LINs are all working with high English Language Learner populations and are committed to improving science instruction for all students. The investigators are helping LINs define a problem space using the standards, performance progressions for ambitious teaching practices, and data on students' performance on assessments. As a community, the investigators use these resources to ask: What works? For whom? And under what conditions? More than just sharing tools or training teacher developers, the NIC is engaged in rapid prototyping of tools and practices with a specific focus on improving instruction for English Language Learners. The Networked Improvement Community affords the opportunity for members to share and empirically test tools and other curricular resources so that productive variations of practices and tools can be generated. The system will accelerate the development of both teaching practices and professional learning models aligned with the college and career ready standards in science and understanding how to develop and sustain NICs that are oriented specifically around the improvement of instruction.