Improving Multi-dimensional Assessment and Instruction: Building and Sustaining Elementary Science Teachers' Capacity Through Learning Communities (Collaborative Research: Strickland, Pellegrino)

The NGSA Elementary project seeks to better understand how to build and sustain the capacity of elementary science teachers to instruct and formatively assess students in NGSS-aligned ways. Our professional learning model prioritizes teacher learning in a community of practice, places instructionally supportive assessments at the forefront, and centers student discourse on disciplinary knowledge and practices to engage in sensemaking and reasoning. Teacher partners use multi-dimensional tasks in their classrooms and discuss experiences during PL sessions.