Collaborative Research: Understanding STEM Teaching through Integrated Contexts in Everyday Life

对学校责任和教师绩效衡量标准的日益重视，导致了科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)教学，强调内容和程序性知识，而不是批判性思维和现实世界的应用。然而，批判性思维和应用对于培养学生的实用科学素养技能至关重要。在经济不景气的城市环境中，这一需求或许最为迫切。促进STEM参与和学习的一个战略是在STEM概念、原则和与学习者相关的STEM相关问题之间建立明确和有意义的联系。社会科学问题(SSI)可以为促进所需类型的参与提供强有力的途径。SSI是有争议且定义不明确的问题，有科学基础，但必须包括道德和伦理选择。例如，在城市环境中，经济条件较差、文化不同的学生的SSI可能包括含铅油漆污染、糟糕的水或空气质量，或者“食物沙漠”的存在。通过将与当地相关的SSI与社会正义的目标相结合，该项目使用的社会正义STEM教学框架(SJSP)旨在支持学生利用他们的科学专长成为变革的推动者。SSP可能会对教师、学生、学校和学生所在的社区产生潜在的变革。然而，要使SSP有效地促进STEM学习，教师必须学会如何将STEM的概念和实践整合到他们学生环境中存在的各种现实世界SSI中。这一合作项目旨在实施和评估费城及周边地区经济困难学区7-12年级STEM教师的综合专业发展计划。教师将根据培养学生STEM参与的标准，开发将SSI纳入他们的教学中的方法。教师的教学实践将提高学生的STEM素养，同时利用他们自己的知识和文化来解决复杂和具有伦理挑战性的STEM问题，从而促进学生成为变革的推动者。这个合作研究项目涉及阿卡迪亚大学、梅西赫斯特大学、拉萨尔大学、维拉诺瓦大学和圣约瑟夫大学。本研究旨在探讨专业发展计划(PD)对STEM教师在SSI和SJPS教学中发展其教学内容知识(PCK)的有效性。在四年的时间里，三组25名7-12年级的教师将参加大约200小时的PD。SSI和SSP包含真实、复杂的现实世界、基于STEM的问题，这些问题与学生及其社区经历的不平等直接相关，学生可以通过使用基于探究的学习策略在课堂上接触到这些不平等。通过促进学生对STEM在日常生活中的相关性的参与和认识，本PD的教师参与者将促进STEM的学习，特别是在历史上被STEM学科边缘化的学生和来自经济困难背景的学生中。该研究计划旨在揭示PD计划的要素，这些要素最有效地支持教师提高设计和实施包含SSI的科学、社会和论述要素的学习单元的能力。使用主要定性方法，其他结果包括教师的PCK如何转变为使用SSI/SJPS教学；哪些因素支持和制约教师促进SSI/SJPS的能力；以正义为中心的STEM课程如何帮助学生发展道德和伦理推理、科学怀疑论、STEM探究/建模和SSI话语/辩论。Discovery Research PreK-12项目(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模式和工具，显著提高Pre-K-12学生和教师对STEM科目的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验上的证明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Increased focus on school accountability and teacher performance measures have resulted in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction that emphasizes content and procedural knowledge over critical thinking and real-world applications. Yet, critical thinking and application are essential in developing functional scientific literacy skills among students. This need is perhaps most pressing in economically depressed urban settings. One strategy to promote STEM engagement and learning is to make clear and meaningful connections between STEM concepts, principles, and STEM-related issues relevant to the learner. Socioscientific issues (SSI) can provide a powerful avenue for promoting the desired kinds of engagement. SSI are debatable and ill-defined problems that have a basis in science but necessarily include moral and ethical choices. SSI for economically disadvantaged, culturally diverse students in urban settings might include, for example, lead paint contamination, poor water or air quality, or the existence of “food deserts.” By integrating locally relevant SSI with the goals of social justice, the Social Justice STEM Pedagogies (SJSP) framework the project uses is intended to support students to use their scientific expertise to be agents of change. SJSP can be potentially transformative for teachers, students, schools, and the communities in which students live. For SJSP to effectively promote STEM learning, however, teachers must learn how to integrate STEM-concepts and practices into the various real-world SSI present in their students’ environment. This collaborative project is designed to implement and evaluate a comprehensive professional development plan for grades 7 –12 STEM teachers from economically disadvantaged school districts in Philadelphia and surrounding areas. Teachers will develop ways to incorporate SSI into their instruction that are grounded in standards to foster students’ STEM engagement. The instructional practices enacted by teachers will enhance students’ STEM literacy while utilizing their own knowledge and culture in solving complex and ethically challenging STEM issues, thus promoting students’ abilities to be change agents.This collaborative research project involves Arcadia University, Mercyhurst University, LaSalle University, Villanova University, and St. Joseph’s University. It is designed to investigate the effectiveness of a professional development (PD) program for STEM teachers to develop their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in teaching SSI and SJSP. Over four years, three cohorts of 25 grades 7-12 teachers will participate in about 200 hours of PD. The SSI and SJSP encompass authentic, complex real-world, STEM-based issues that are directly related to the inequities experienced by students and their communities that students can engage with in the classroom through the use of inquiry-based learning strategies. By promoting students’ engagement in and awareness of the relevance of STEM in everyday life, teacher participants in this PD will foster STEM learning, especially among students who have been historically marginalized from STEM disciplines, and who are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The research plan is designed to reveal elements of the PD program that are most effective in supporting teachers’ increased capacity to design and implement units of study that incorporate scientific, social, and discursive elements of SSI. Using predominantly qualitative methods, other outcomes include how teachers’ PCK change towards teaching with SSI/SJSP; what factors support and inhibit teacher’s abilities to promote SSI/SJSP; and how justice-centered STEM lessons help students to develop moral and ethical reasoning, scientific skepticism, STEM inquiry/modeling, and SSI discourse/argumentation. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of STEM subjects by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.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.