A Professional Development Model for High School Teachers to Adapt Curricula Toward Students' Knowledges and Resources

This project brings together education researchers, high school science teachers, research scientists, and community-based organizations as co-design teams to modify science curriculum materials to be justice- and community-oriented. Building on existing partnerships between education researchers and 11 science teachers in two districts in Illinois, project teams will engage in cycles of curriculum analysis and adaptation over the course of 3 years. These professional learning cycles will develop pedagogically relevant content expertise, such as deepened understanding of locally relevant science phenomena, as well as infrastructure for community-engaged science instruction. This kind of science instruction provides relevant entry points into science by providing opportunities for students to address their communities' needs, potentially encouraging students to pursue careers in science. Each year, 2,250 students will experience at least one adapted unit, resulting in over 6,500 individual encounters with such an orientation to science over the lifespan of the project. Moreover, by working with science departments for 3 years to support adaptations of the materials they already use, teachers will develop skills for analyzing and adapting curricula beyond the lifespan of the project, impacting additional cohorts of students. The project will develop and disseminate frameworks, tools, and sample adapted units to support similar partnerships across the US.

This study will examine two Illinois districts as comparative cases, strategically selected because of the contextual variation in the levers and entry points for teacher professional learning at each site. This intentional structure enables collection of empirical support for the effectiveness of core elements of the professional learning co-design program on teacher and student learning. Measured learning outcomes include: (a) teachers' frequency of use of NGSS-aligned science pedagogies; (b) development of teachers' critical consciousness; (c) teachers' self-efficacy for culturally sustaining pedagogies in science; and (d) students' epistemologies for science and critical science agency. The research will illuminate variant and invariant elements of the professional learning model, providing theoretical generalizability informing how the model could scale in additional contexts. Finally, the study will examine how the research team builds capacity, both internally and amongst co-design teams, for enacting the professional learning program objectives. These analyses will provide principles and recommendations for establishing and sustaining such co-design teams in other contexts.