Teacher Professional Development for Technology-enhanced Inquiry to Foster Students' 21st Century Learning

This project will develop and evaluate a module for use in a 7th grade classroom that promotes student development of 21st Century skills with a particular focus on student development of scientific reasoning. The technology-enhanced curriculum will be designed to engage learners in deep and meaningful investigations to promote student learning of content in parallel with 21st century skills.

Full Description

The goal of this Exploratory Design and Development Teaching project is to develop and evaluate a module for use in a 7th grade classroom that promotes student development of 21st Century skills with a particular focus on student development of scientific reasoning. The technology-enhanced curriculum will be designed to engage learners in deep and meaningful investigations to promote student learning of content in parallel with 21st century skills. The module will be designed using principles of inquiry-based learning as well as the principles of universal design for learning (UDL). The motivation behind this project is that it will directly contribute to the limited research on the interventions that impact teachers' capacity to provide high quality 21st century STEM education to all students, with a specific focus on underrepresented minorities and those with disabilities. The classroom setting for which the curriculum will be delivered is within an urban district which includes a large number of minority students and over 20% students with specific learning disabilities. The project will catalyze students' deep understanding of content knowledge while developing 21st century skills in parallel; hence better preparing students for sustainable learning experiences into high school and beyond.

A study will be conducted to determine the effectiveness of the learning modules on classroom practices as well as student learning. A mixed methods design involving multiple measures will provide insights into changes in teachers' content knowledge, teaching practices that include a focus on 21st century learning, and fidelity of use of the TI21 framework for implementation of the learning activities. Pre- and post-testing of students using a scientific reasoning assessment and surveys on attitudes towards STEM, along with validated and widely used concept inventories, will provide further measures. As part of this exploratory project, the design and validity of instruments for use with the targeted population, which includes students with specific learning disabilities, will be further tested. This will include administering some of the assessments through web-based apps to meet the needs of these students. The learning modules, with embedded assessments and web-based apps, will provide an innovative approach in which transferable 21st century skills can be developed and measured. Outcomes of this project will be disseminated throughout the urban school system and therefore have the ability to impact thousands of other students (mostly minorities and many with disabilities) and their science, math, and technology teachers. Project outcomes will also inform the development of future science and/or modules for use in similar urban classroom settings.

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