Instructional leadership for scientific practices: Resources for principals in evaluating and supporting teachers' science instruction

虽然K-8校长负责所有学科领域的教学改进，但他们传统上一直专注于识字和数学，只是偶尔关注科学内容和实践。新的科学标准和评估要求校长和其他教学领导向教师提供重要支持，帮助他们成功地将科学实践融入教学中。有证据表明，这些教学领导者往往缺乏提供这种支持的知识、资源或技能。该项目将研究校长和其他教学领导者的知识和监督技能，以支持教师成功地将科学实践融入他们的教学中，并开发创新资源来支持这些领导者，特别是少数族裔的城市学校。该项目将有助于编写关于K-8学校科学教学领导力的新兴但有限的文献。开发的资源将涉及：(1)介绍科学实践(包括8项科学实践的基本原理、描述和小插曲)；(2)在学校使用工具(提供观察方案、教师反馈表和改进计划模板)；以及(3)分析样本视频(包括指向K-8科学教学视频的链接、完整的监督工具、对其编码的解释，以及与教师讨论如何使用这些工具)。该项目将对四名校长进行深入访谈，与波士顿公立学校的25名校长合作，反复设计和测试资源。该项目还将开发一种衡量领导能力内容的科学实践知识(LCK-SP)，用于评估校长的知识。该项目的研究部分将：(1)调查校长关于科学实践和监督科学教学的方法的当前知识；(2)研究如何设计资源来支持教学领导人关于科学实践的内容知识。

Although K-8 principals are responsible for instructional improvement across all subject areas, their focus has traditionally been on literacy and mathematics and only occasionally on science content and practice. New standards and assessments in science require that principals and other instructional leaders provide significant support to teachers to help them successfully integrate scientific practices into their instruction. There is evidence that these instructional leaders often lack the knowledge, resources or skills to provide this support. This project will research the knowledge and supervision skills principals' and other instructional leaders' need to support teachers in successfully integrating scientific practices into their instruction, and develop innovative resources to support these leaders with a particular focus on high-minority, urban schools. The project will contribute to the emerging but limited literature on instructional leadership in science at the K-8 school level. The resources developed will involve: (1) Introducing scientific practices (including rationales, descriptions and vignettes illustrating each of the 8 scientific practices); (2) Using tools in schools (providing an observation protocol, teacher feedback form and improvement planning template); and (3) Analyzing sample video (including links to video of K-8 science instruction, completed supervision tools, explanations of their coding, and discussion of how to use them with teachers). The project will conduct in-depth interviews with four principals, work with 25 principals in the Boston Public Schools to iteratively design and test the resources. The project will also develop a measure of Leadership Content Knowledge of Scientific Practices (LCK-SP) which will be used to assess principals' knowledge. The project's research component will: (1) investigate principals' current knowledge about scientific practices and methods for supervision of science instruction; and (2) examine how resources can be designed to support instructional leaders' content knowledge of scientific practices.