CAREER: Cultivating Teachers' Epistemic Empathy to Promote Responsive Teaching
![](/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/CAREER-%20Cultivating%20Teachers%27%20Epistemic%20Empathy%20to%20Promote%20Responsive%20Teaching.png?itok=7Q9MPMCi)
In prior work, BSCS studied STeLLA, a video-based analysis-of-practice professional learning (PL) model and found that it enhanced elementary science teacher and student outcomes. But the face-to-face model is difficult to scale. We present the results of a two-year design-based research study to translate the face-to-face PL into a facilitated online experience. The purpose is to create an effective, flexible, and cost-efficient PL model that will reach a broader audience of teachers.
Co-PI(s): Gillian Roehrig, University of Minnesota
This study explored Bilingual and Dual Language (BDL) program models in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico. We developed and validated a survey in Spanish and English (n=105) with three constructs: (a) recommended BLD practices; (b) personal qualities for S&E teaching; and (c) recommended S&E pedagogical practices. We found that BDL teachers were confident in their ability to facilitate their students’ biliteracy development but not related to S&E literacy in Spanish-speaking countries.
This project aims to investigate needs and challenges in developing an informed public able to evaluate empirical evidence generated from scientific activities. This includes understanding teachers' epistemic goals and practices and how to provide professional development (PD) to improve instruction. The resulting instruction will offer new affordances to advance students' and teachers' learning.
Co-PI(s): Clark Chinn, Rutgers University
The A-STEP project fosters collaboration between university faculty and pathway partners to implement common set of tools (Next Gen ASET Toolkit) across a science teacher training and development pathway. Partnerships across steps function under shared goals and paradigm shifts for pedagogical reform along the teacher pathway. A-STEP promotes change across our Networked Improvement Community (NIC) and the local pathway partners working with each university, ultimately impacting the enactment of the NGSS in respective K-12 classrooms.
Project researchers are training pre-service teachers to tutor students with learning disabilities in Algebra 1, combining principles from special education, mathematics education, and cognitive psychology. The trainings emphasize the use of gestures and strategic questioning to support students with learning disabilities and to build students’ understanding in Algebra 1.
The SPIRAL project seeks to develop and test a new model for vertical-team professional development, along with a set of electronic tools enabling collaboration among these teams to support instructional improvement aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). We seek to better understand how teachers use a custom-designed digital portfolio to better understand students' learning trajectories across K-8 science so as to shape their own instructional practice with relation to the spiraled NGSS.
How Do Teacher Leaders Transform Scientific Practices to Promote Students Interest and Motivation in STEM? Formal and informal K-12+ educators learn to employ strategies of community mapping, curricular mapping and place-based, culturally sustaining pedagogy to write, teach, and evaluate NGSS lessons that engage underrepresented students in mathematics, life, earth, and physical sciences. Two case studies highlight how educators apply these strategies to intersect three domains: experiential/place-based learning, culturally sustaining learning, and disciplinary learning .
Science teachers must sometimes teach outside of their expertise, and this type of teaching assignment is referred to as being out-of-field. Among newly hired teachers, this type of assignment may have a detrimental impact in the development of their instruction. This study explored the classroom instruction of 17 newly hired teachers who were teaching both in-field and out-of-field in the physical sciences during their first three years.
Science teachers must sometimes teach outside of their expertise, and this type of teaching assignment is referred to as being out-of-field. Among newly hired teachers, this type of assignment may have a detrimental impact in the development of their instruction. This study explored the classroom instruction of 17 newly hired teachers who were teaching both in-field and out-of-field in the physical sciences during their first three years.
A teacher uses formative assessment interviews to uncover evidence of students’ understandings and to plan targeted instruction in a mathematics intervention class. Authors present an example of a student interview, a discussion of the benefits and challenges of conducting interviews, and actionable suggestions for implementing them.
MacVicar, T. J., Brodesky, A. R., and Fagan, E. R. (2021). The power of interviewing students. Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12, 114(6), 436–444.
A teacher uses formative assessment interviews to uncover evidence of students’ understandings and to plan targeted instruction in a mathematics intervention class. Authors present an example of a student interview, a discussion of the benefits and challenges of conducting interviews, and actionable suggestions for implementing them.