Determining Teachers' Baseline Practice and Alignment Prior to a Systemic Curriculum Change

The goal of this research is to document current teaching practices prior to the systemic integration of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in Baltimore City Public schools. In this study, UMBC will collaborate with Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) to collect and document teacher classroom practices prior to the implementation of an extended professional development model that targets pedagogical skills associated with the Next Generation Science Standards. The broad objective of the project is to characterize the benefits and limitations of utilizing controlled practice-teaching as a key component of teacher professional development for integrating NGSS aligned practices in middle school science classrooms. Success will be measured by changes in teacher attitudes, enhancement of teacher pedagogical skills and student learning gains. Sixty teachers, and over 4,500 students in Baltimore City will be directly impacted through the professional development and curriculum enactment efforts proposed. As a full partner in the project, the City Schools' leadership will also learn what works, for whom, and under what conditions in schools that are representative of their diverse district. Lessons learned have the potential to inform the implementation of other new reform initiatives within City Schools and beyond. Findings from the proposed research have the potential to advance our understanding of innovative professional development strategies and their impact on classroom practices and student learning.

This project focuses on a national need of models for high quality professional development that directly tie specific strategies to classroom-based instructional changes and student learning outcomes. One particular shift in classroom practice that is fundamental for the classroom implementation of NGSS is scientific discourse and argumentation. One particular strategy that has shown promise for supporting teachers' use of strategies supporting argumentation is the use of controlled practice teaching. The proposed study explicitly attempts to determine the impact of the controlled practice-teaching using a quasi-experimental design. The research plan involves middle science teachers being assigned to one of two experimental conditions (PD including or excluding a controlled practice-teaching component) and then to investigate potential differences among the two treatments and control conditions related to changes in attitudes toward NGSS, classroom practices and impact on student learning. The researcher hypothesizes that the inclusion of control-practice teaching that is imbedded in a sustained professional development program will promote the development of teacher pedagogical skills aligned with NGSS more effectively than sustained professional development that does not include a control-practice component.