Professional Development

STEP UP is mobilizing and supporting physics teachers with resources that disrupt narrow perceptions of physics and promote supportive classroom cultures to facilitate physics identity development, particularly for women. Drawing on counternarratives, the lessons/materials highlight broad physics careers pursued by diverse individuals, explicitly discuss the role of bias, and recognize those who have been invisible. The lessons/materials were found to have a positive effect on the future physics intentions of women and minoritized racial/ethnic groups.

Taking a Deep Dive (TaDD): Investigating PD impact on what teachers take up and use in their classroom, is a 3-year DRK-12 Impact study within the teaching strand. This study will collect qualitative data from four large NSF funded mathematics PD projects to examine teachers' uptake of content, pedagogy and materials in order to understand and unpack what factors are associated with what teachers take up and use two to three years beyond their original PD experience.

InSTEP is developing an online personalized professional learning platform to support teachers' growth in providing students learning opportunities in statistics and data science using key practices and processes with data. We are creating a scalable, accessible, and flexible approach aligned with research-based principles of effective professional learning. We use design principles for online teacher learning, and our materials are based on research on students' and teachers' learning in statistics and data science education.

Although several middle school science units are emerging with high ratings on an NGSS EQuIP review, few have been subjected to experimental or quasi-experimental study to examine their efficacy with teachers or students. We share the design specifications, development process, and research findings from a quasi-experimental test of a designed-for-NGSS middle school science unit. Treatment students outperformed comparison students on a test of three-dimensional learning (p = .019; d = .300).

Co-PI(s): Betty Stennett and Lindsey Mohan, BSCS Science Learning

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.