Elementary

The United States has made a significant effort and investment in STEM education, yet the size and the composition of the STEM workforce continues to fail to meet demand. It is thus important to understand the barriers and factors that influence individual educational and career choices. In this article, we conduct a literature review of the current knowledge surrounding individual and gender differences in STEM educational and career choices, using expectancy–value theory as a guiding framework.

Although the gender gap in math course-taking and performance has narrowed in recent decades, females continue to be underrepresented in math-intensive fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Career pathways encompass the ability to pursue a career as well as the motivation to employ that ability. Individual differences in cognitive capacity and motivation are also influenced by broader sociocultural factors.

This paper describes a model for differentiating professional development to address teachers’ varied knowledge, experiences, and interests.

Brodesky, A., Fagan, E., Tobey, C., & Hirsch, L. (2016). Moving Beyond One-Size-All PD: A Model for Differentiating Professional Learning for Teachers. NCSM Journal of Mathematics Education Leadership, 17(1), 20-37.

This paper describes a strategic process for using formative assessment probes to gather and interpret evidence of student mathematics understandings and misconceptions and then targeting instruction to address identified needs.

Fagan, E., Tobey, C., & Brodesky, A. (2016). Targeting Instruction with Formative Assessment Probes. Teaching Children Mathematics, 23(3), 146-157.

This case study contributes to efforts to characterize teaching that is responsive to children’s mathematical thinking. We conceptualize responsive teaching as a type of teaching in which teachers’ instructional decisions about what to pursue and how to pursue it are continually adjusted during instruction in response to children’s content-specific thinking, instead of being determined in advance.

This study examines an innovative professional development program that provides teachers with an opportunity to practice pedagogical strategies in a low stakes classroom context. Elementary teachers participated in a one-week summer Institute and two-week Practicum focused on learning strategies for facilitating scientific discourse and argumentation in their classrooms. During the Practicum, teachers taught lessons in a summer program for elementary school students and engaged in daily video-based discussions to reflect on their instruction.

The ‘conceptual storyline’ of a lesson refers to the flow and sequencing of learning activities such that science concepts align and progress in ways that are instructionally meaningful to student learning of the concepts. Research demonstrates that when teachers apply lesson design strategies to create a coherent science content storyline, student learning is positively impacted (Roth et al., 2011).

Elementary school teachers’ perceptions of school resources (i.e., material, human, and social) for teaching science to diverse student groups were examined across three school districts from one state. As part of a 3-year curricular and professional development intervention, we examined the effect on teachers’ perceptions after their first year of participation. The study involved 103 fifth-grade teachers from 33 schools participating in the intervention and 116 teachers from 33 control schools. The teachers completed a survey at the beginning and end of the school year.

As part of a three-year curricular and professional development intervention focused on English language learners (ELLs), this study examined the intervention's effect on teachers' science knowledge and instructional practices after one year of implementation. The P-SELL (Promoting Science Among English Language Learners) intervention comprised curriculum materials for students and teachers and teacher professional development workshops during the summer and throughout the school year.

The authors evaluated the effects of P-SELL, a science curricular and professional development intervention for fifth-grade students with a focus on English language learners (ELLs). Using a randomized controlled trial design with 33 treatment and 33 control schools across three school districts in one state, we found significant and meaningfully sized intervention effects on a researcher-developed science assessment and the state science assessment.