COVID Connects Us: Nurturing Novice Teachers’ Justice Science Teaching Identities

该项目涉及美国当代的两个问题：在COVID-19大流行期间，种族和少数民族社区感受到的破坏；以及各州在战略上引导采用下一代科学标准时所面临的挑战。这些担忧需要科学课堂文化的转变，以配合当前学习研究的以下发现。(a)当学生需要解释真实世界的事件和解决对他们有意义的问题时，他们是最有动力的。(b)当学生对这些现实世界的事件或社会问题进行解释，并被允许以创造性的方式参与时，他们可以像科学家和工程师一样对核心科学思想产生深刻的理解。(c)学生需要培养一种批判性的视角，了解研究什么科学，如何研究科学，以及谁被排除在研究之外，以了解科学如何受到权力问题的影响，并参与更公正的参与形式。在科学课堂中实现这些文化转变需要教师培养以正义为中心、以学生为中心和以文化为中心的职业认同。在《COVID连接我们》中，项目团队调查了学习如何支持以正义为中心的雄心勃勃的科学教学（JuST）所面临的挑战。项目团队将与中学科学教师网络合作，因为他们首先实施了一个共同单元，旨在以文化可持续、注重解释-构建和有意反压迫的方式吸引青少年参与科学和工程实践。然后，教师们将利用他们分享的经验来修改未来的教学方式，以公正为中心，并以研究表明对他们的学习很重要的方式吸引学生。这个为期三年的项目的目标是发展和理解核心文化设置的教学惯例，这些教学惯例可以作为实现科学课堂文化转变的有力立足点。项目团队将收集和分析教师叙述，以研究两种核心和重点教师支持对参与教师作为JuST实践实践者的专业认同发展的影响。这些支持包括：1)所有教师将在COVID科学方面实施的文化设置单元；2)教师在学习社区网络中的参与度。在项目的前两个学年的每一年，大约20个由4名教师组成的学习社区将在三个不同的地点参与基于设计的实施研究周期。这些学习社区将共同研究他们的教学视频和学生作业样本，以了解和应对JuST实践的挑战。该研究的预期贡献包括：(a)教师发现在课程单元中有效的一套JuST例程；(b)示范JuST单位，包括但不限于COVID科学的初始单位；(c)关于科学教育者如何培养与学科种族主义相关的批判意识以及支持学生培养批判意识的实践的基于研究的发现；d)教师公正认同发展的小插曲和深入的案例研究。探索研究preK-12项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高preK-12学生和教师对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）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实证依据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project relates to two contemporary concerns in the US: the devastation felt by racial and ethnic minoritized communities during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the challenges states face as they strategically navigate the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards. These concerns necessitate a shift in the culture of science classrooms to align with the following findings from current research on learning. (a) Students are best motivated when they need to explain real world events and solve problems that are meaningful to them. (b) When students develop explanations of these real-world events or societal problems and are allowed to participate in creative ways, they can develop deep understandings of core science ideas similar to that of scientists and engineers. (c) Students need to develop a critical lens about what science is studied, how it is studied, and who is left out of what is studied to understand how science is impacted by issues of power and to engage in more just forms of participation. Realizing these cultural transformations in science classrooms will require teachers to develop professional identities that are justice-, student- and culture-centered. In COVID Connects Us, the project team investigates the challenges of learning how to support justice-centered ambitious science teaching (JuST). The project team will partner with networks of secondary science teachers as they first implement a common unit aimed at engaging youth in science and engineering practices in ways that are culturally-sustaining, focused on explanation-construction and intentionally anti-oppressive. The teachers will then use their shared experiences to revise future instruction in ways that are justice-centered and that engage students in the ways research suggests is important for their learning. The goals of this three-year project center on developing and understanding core culture-setting teaching routines that can serve as powerful footholds to realize cultural shifts in science classrooms. The project team will collect and analyze teacher narratives to study the impact of two core and focal teacher supports on participating teachers’ professional identity development as practitioners of JuST practices. The supports include 1) a culture setting unit that all teachers will implement on the science of COVID; and 2) teachers’ engagement in a network of learning communities. During each of the first two academic years of the project, about 20 learning communities made up of four teachers in three different sites will engage in design-based implementation research cycles. These learning communities will collectively study videos of their teaching and samples of student-work to understand and address the challenges of JuST practices. Expected contributions of the study include: (a) a set of JuST routines that teachers find to be effective across curricular units; (b) exemplar JuST units including, but not limited to, the initial unit on the science of COVID; (c) research-based findings about how science educators develop critical consciousness related to disciplinary racism and practices that support students’ in developing the same; and d) vignettes and in-depth case studies of teachers’ development of JuST identities.The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) 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.