Building Coherence in STEM Learning Opportunities for Pre-Service Elementary Teachers across Disciplinary Boundaries

该项目将解决STEM教师教育中的一个根本挑战。虽然越来越多的证据表明，小学教师在塑造学生在STEM领域的学习、兴趣、动机和坚持性方面发挥着核心作用，但教师面临着许多挑战，包括内容知识发展不足，对STEM教学缺乏准备和焦虑，以及在教师准备计划期间内容和方法课程数量有限。关于教师教育的研究一再记录了教师教育方案缺乏连贯性和支离破碎的挑战，这进一步加剧了这些问题。近年来，数学和科学教育的改革(数学共同核心国家标准--CCSSM和下一代科学标准--NGSS)已成为重点，并明确呼吁STEM各学科之间保持协调一致。STEM课程涉及不同的学科和系(如教育、科学和数学)，这一事实进一步加剧了这一挑战。以前围绕共同愿景组织教师教育的努力通常侧重于在整个课程、单一学科或跨机构大规模建立一致性。这一改善本科生STEM教育(IUSE)项目旨在通过一套重新设计的八门数学和科学内容课程以及数学、科学和技术方法课程，为初级职前教师(PST)建立STEM学习机会的智力一致性。这个项目将促进对本科生初级PST如何学习STEM内容知识、STEM教学实践以及以连贯和关联的方法关注公平和正义的理解。该项目将由犹他大学教育学院和理学院的一个教员组成的工作组参与，他们将协作重新设计和实施小学教师的所有STEM内容和方法课程，以期建立小学PST的连贯性。该项目由IUSE计划和Robert Noyce教师奖学金计划提供资金，将产生有助于以连贯和严格的小学教师准备模式开放对STEM领域之间的学科联系的关注，为所有小学生提供STEM学习成功的模式。该项目旨在有意地利用STEM领域的联系，在跨学科和学院的课程内容和方法方面建立连贯和严格的准备。将重点放在两个关键的学科联系(陈述和论证)上，这两个联系是课堂上产生知识的核心机会，并与当前的数学和科学改革保持一致，将发挥关键支柱的作用。该项目将在小学教师教育中建立STEM学科一致性，以支持发展雄心勃勃的教学，就小学儿童的STEM学习目标而言，它在智力上是雄心勃勃的，在为所有不同族裔、种族、社会经济地位、语言和性别群体的学生服务方面，它在社会上是雄心勃勃的。雄心勃勃的STEM教学支持所有学生发展对数学和科学中的大想法的概念性理解，解决复杂的问题，并参与真实的纪律实践，如CCSSM(理解问题并坚持不懈地解决问题)和NGSS(例如，从证据中进行辩论)。这个以设计为基础的研究项目将在重新设计和实施的八门课程的背景下测试、完善和改进关于小学PST学习内容和教学的具体猜想，这将在该项目的整个生命周期中影响大约200名小学教师和他们后来的K-12学生。具体地说，本项目将探讨：(1)通过注重陈述和论点，雄心勃勃的STEM教学的连贯愿景如何为初级STEM教师提供富有成效的STEM学习机会，以及(2)通过关注陈述和论点，体验和学习制定雄心勃勃的STEM教学的连贯愿景如何影响初级STEM教师的(A)用于教授STEM的内容知识，(B)用于雄心勃勃的STEM教学的教学实践技能，以及(C)STEM教学中关于公平和正义的原则和倾向。该项目的成果将有助于：(1)关于如何促进STEM内容知识的学习、STEM教学实践的教学实践以及STEM教学中围绕公平和正义的原则和处理办法的不断增长的文献；(2)以连贯和严格的初级PST准备模式开启对STEM领域之间学科联系的关注，以可能增加围绕STEM内容和教学的PST学习机会的方式；以及(3)如何在STEM PEM计划中建立学科一致性的双管齐下的路线图。

This project will address a fundamental challenge in STEM teacher education. While growing evidence shows that elementary teachers play a central role in shaping their students' learning, interests, motivations, and persistence in STEM fields, teachers face many challenges including underdeveloped content knowledge, feelings of being underprepared and anxious about teaching STEM, and a limited number of content and methods courses during their teacher preparation program. Research on teacher education has repeatedly documented challenges with a lack of coherence and fragmentation in teacher education programs that further exacerbates these problems. In recent years, reforms in both mathematics and science education (Common Core State Standards for Mathematics--CCSSM and the Next Generation Science Standards--NGSS) have foregrounded and explicitly called for coherence across STEM disciplines. This challenge is further compounded by the fact that STEM coursework spans different disciplines and departments (e.g., education, science, and mathematics). Prior efforts to organize teacher education around a common vision have typically focused on building coherence in an entire program, in a single discipline, or at a large scale across institutions. This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project in the Engaged Student Learning track seeks to build intellectual coherence in STEM learning opportunities for elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) across a set of eight redesigned mathematics and science content courses and mathematics, science, and technology methods courses. This project will advance understanding of how undergraduate elementary PSTs learn STEM content knowledge, instructional practices for teaching STEM, and attention to equity and justice in a coherent and connected approach. This project will involve a working group of faculty from the College of Education and the College of Science at the University of Utah, who will collaboratively redesign and implement all STEM content and methods courses for elementary teachers with a goal of building coherence for elementary PSTs. This project, with funding from the IUSE program and the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, will produce results that will contribute to an opening up of the focus on disciplinary connections between STEM fields in a coherent and rigorous model of elementary teacher preparation for providing success for all elementary students in STEM learning. This project aims to deliberately leverage connections across STEM fields to build coherent and rigorous preparation in content and methods courses across disciplines and colleges. A focus on two key disciplinary connections (representations and arguments) that are situated as central knowledge generation opportunities in classrooms and align with current mathematics and science reforms, will function as key pillars. This project will build STEM disciplinary coherence in elementary teacher education to support the development of ambitious instruction, which is intellectually ambitious with respect to STEM learning goals for elementary children and socially ambitious with respect to serving all students across ethnic, racial, socioeconomic status, linguistic, and gender groups. Ambitious STEM instruction supports all students in developing conceptual understanding of big ideas in mathematics and science, solving complex problems, and engaging in authentic disciplinary practices such as those set out in the CCSSM (e.g., making sense of problems and persevering in solving them) and the NGSS (e.g., engaging in argument from evidence). This design-based research project will test, refine, and improve specific conjectures about the elementary PSTs' learning of content and instruction in the context of eight redesigned and implemented courses, which will impact approximately 200 elementary teachers and their subsequent K-12 students over the project's lifetime. Specifically, this project will address: (1) how a coherent vision of ambitious STEM instruction through a focus on representations and arguments affords productive STEM learning opportunities for elementary PSTs, and (2) how experiencing and learning to enact a coherent vision of ambitious STEM instruction through a focus on representations and arguments influence elementary PSTs' (a) content knowledge for teaching STEM, (b) skill with instructional practices for ambitious STEM teaching, and (c) principles and dispositions around equity and justice in STEM instruction. The results of this project will advance knowledge by contributing to: (1) the growing literature on how to foster PSTs' learning of STEM content knowledge, instructional practices for teaching STEM, and principles and dispositions around equity and justice in STEM instruction; (2) opening up a focus on disciplinary connections between STEM fields in a coherent and rigorous model of elementary PST preparation in ways that may strengthen PST learning opportunities around STEM content and teaching; and (3) a two-pronged roadmap for how to build disciplinary coherence in STEM PST programs.