Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Remote Chemistry Teacher Professional Development Delivery: Enduring Lessons for Programmatic Redesign

COVID-19 has thrust educators into a period of uncertainty, complicating conventional ways of teaching and learning. We suspect that the pandemic has magnified the challenges that some high school teachers already experience, particularly when they are the sole chemistry teacher at their school. The pandemic has likely inhibited collegial interactions and access to professional development (PD).

Author/Presenter
Meng-Yang M. Wu

KatieMarie Magnone

Roy Tasker

Ellen J. Yezierski

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

COVID-19 has thrust educators into a period of uncertainty, complicating conventional ways of teaching and learning. We suspect that the pandemic has magnified the challenges that some high school teachers already experience, particularly when they are the sole chemistry teacher at their school. The pandemic has likely inhibited collegial interactions and access to professional development (PD). Our reflections from redesigning a face-to-face PD program to one that is remotely delivered provide recommendations that advance PD accessibility and interactivity to mitigate isolation and other longstanding challenges teachers may face. In this article, we discuss how the cognitive learning model informed emergent teaching practices that guided the transformation of the PD’s implementation for 20 high school chemistry teachers.

Pedagogical Chemistry Sensemaking: A Novel Conceptual Framework to Facilitate Pedagogical Sensemaking in Model-based Lesson Planning

Researchers have typically identified and characterized teachers’ knowledge bases (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge and subject matter knowledge) in an effort to improve enacted instructional strategies. As shown by the Refined Consensus Model (RCM), understanding teacher learning, beliefs, and practices is predicated on the interconnections of such knowledge bases.

Author/Presenter

Meng-Yang M. Wu

Ellen J. Yezierski

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2022
Short Description

Researchers have typically identified and characterized teachers’ knowledge bases (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge and subject matter knowledge) in an effort to improve enacted instructional strategies. As shown by the Refined Consensus Model (RCM), understanding teacher learning, beliefs, and practices is predicated on the interconnections of such knowledge bases. However, lesson planning (defined as the transformation of subject matter knowledge to enacted pedagogical content knowledge) remains underexplored despite its central position in the RCM. We aim to address this gap by developing a conceptual framework known as Pedagogical Chemistry Sensemaking (PedChemSense).

Examining Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Answer Changing Behavior on a Content Knowledge for Teaching Science Assessment

Preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) prepare for various standardized assessments, such as the Praxis® licensure assessment. However, there is little research on test-taking behavior and test-taking strategies for this examinee population. A common belief and instruction given in some test preparation materials is that examinees should stick to their initial answer choice. Decades of research has debunked this belief, finding that generally examinees benefit from answer changing behavior. However, there is minimal research on answer changing behavior among PSTs.

Author/Presenter

Katherine E. Castellano

Jamie N. Mikeska

Jung Aa Moon

Steven Holtzman

Jie Gao

Yang Jiang

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2022
Short Description

We use an online Content Knowledge for Teaching (CKT) assessment that measures PSTs’ CKT in one science area: matter and its interactions. In this study, we analyzed process data from administering the online CKT matter assessment to 822 PSTs from across the US to better understand PSTs’ behaviors and interactions on this computer-based science assessment.

Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Mathematics and Science A Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis of Recent DRK-12 Projects

This review synthesized insights from 27 NSF-funded projects, totaling $62 million, that studied pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12, split roughly equally across mathematics and science education. The projects primarily applied correlational/observational and longitudinal methods, often targeted teaching in the middle school grades, and used a wide variety of approaches to measure teachers’ PCK.

Author/Presenter

David Miller

Isabella Pinerua

Jonathan Margolin

Dean Gerdeman

Year
2022
Short Description

This review synthesized insights from 27 NSF-funded projects, totaling $62 million, that studied pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12, split roughly equally across mathematics and science education. The projects primarily applied correlational/observational and longitudinal methods, often targeted teaching in the middle school grades, and used a wide variety of approaches to measure teachers’ PCK. The projects advanced substantive knowledge about PCK across four major lines of research, especially regarding the measurement and development of PCK.

“Science Theatre Makes You Good at Science”: Affordances of Embodied Performances in Urban Elementary Science Classrooms

School science continues to alienate students identifying with nondominant, non-western cultures, and learners of color, and considers science as an enterprise where success necessitates divorcing the self and corporeal body from ideas and the mind. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind–body divide, we aimed at creating pedagogical spaces and places in science classes that sustain equitable opportunities for engagement and meaning making where body and mind are enmeshed.

Author/Presenter

Maria Varelas

Rebecca T. Kotler

Hannah D. Natividad

Nathan C. Phillips

Rachelle P. Tsachor

Rebecca Woodard

Marcie Gutierrez

Miguel A. Melchor

Maria Rosario

Year
2021
Short Description

School science continues to alienate students identifying with nondominant, non-western cultures, and learners of color, and considers science as an enterprise where success necessitates divorcing the self and corporeal body from ideas and the mind. Resisting the colonizing pedagogy of the mind–body divide, we aimed at creating pedagogical spaces and places in science classes that sustain equitable opportunities for engagement and meaning making where body and mind are enmeshed. In the context of a partnership between school- and university-based educators and researchers, we explored how multimodal literacies cultivated through the performing arts, provide students from minoritized communities opportunities to both create knowledge and to position themselves as science experts and brilliant and creative meaning makers.

Conceptions and Consequences of Mathematical Argumentation, Justification, and Proof

This book aims to advance ongoing debates in the field of mathematics and mathematics education regarding conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof and the consequences for research and practice when applying particular conceptions of each construct. Through analyses of classroom practice across grade levels using different lenses - particular conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof - researchers consider the implications of how each conception shapes empirical outcomes.

Author/Presenter

Kristen N. Bieda,
AnnaMarie Conner,
Karl W. Kosko,
Megan Staples

AnnaMarie Conner

Karl W. Kosko

Megan Staples

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2020
Short Description

This book aims to advance ongoing debates in the field of mathematics and mathematics education regarding conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof and the consequences for research and practice when applying particular conceptions of each construct. Through analyses of classroom practice across grade levels using different lenses - particular conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof - researchers consider the implications of how each conception shapes empirical outcomes. In each section, organized by grade band, authors adopt particular conceptions of argumentation, justification, and proof, and they analyse one data set from each perspective. In addition, each section includes a synthesis chapter from an expert in the field to bring to the fore potential implications, as well as new questions, raised by the analyses. Finally, a culminating section considers the use of each conception across grade bands and data sets.

Domain appropriateness and skepticism in viable argumentation

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2020
Short Description

Several recent studies have focused on helping students understand the limitations of empirical arguments (e.g., Stylianides, G. J. & Stylianides, A. J., 2009, Brown, 2014). One view is that students use empirical argumentation because they hold empirical proof schemes—they are convinced a general claim is true by checking a few cases (Harel & Sowder, 1998). Some researchers have sought to unseat students’ empirical proof schemes by developing students’ skepticism, their uncertainty about the truth of a general claim in the face of confirming (but not exhaustive) evidence (e.g., Brown, 2014; Stylianides, G. J. & Stylianides, A. J., 2009). With sufficient skepticism, students would seek more secure, non-empirical arguments to convince themselves that a general claim is true. We take a different perspective, seeking to develop students’ awareness of domain appropriateness (DA), whether the argument type is appropriate to the domain of the claim. In particular, DA entails understanding that an empirical check of a proper subset of cases in a claim’s domain does not (i) guarantee the claim is true and does not (ii) provide an argument that is acceptable in the mathematical or classroom community, although checking all cases does both (i) and (ii). DA is distinct from skepticism; it is not concerned with students’ confidence about the truth of a general claim. We studied how ten 8th graders developed DA through classroom experiences that were part of a broader project focused on developing viable argumentation. 

A Framework of Construct-Irrelevant Variance for Contextualized Constructed Response Assessment

Estimating and monitoring the construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) is of significant importance to validity, especially for constructed response assessments with rich contextualized information. To examine CIV in contextualized constructed response assessments, we developed a framework including a model accounting for CIV and a measurement that could differentiate the CIV. Specifically, the model includes CIV due to three factors: the variability of assessment item scenarios, judging severity, and rater scoring sensitivity to the scenarios in tasks.

Author/Presenter

Xiaoming Zhai

Kevin C. Haudek

Christopher Wilson

Molly Stuhlsatz

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

Estimating and monitoring the construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) is of significant importance to validity, especially for constructed response assessments with rich contextualized information. To examine CIV in contextualized constructed response assessments, we developed a framework including a model accounting for CIV and a measurement that could differentiate the CIV.

Resource(s)

“Well That's How the Kids Feel!”—Epistemic Empathy as a Driver of Responsive Teaching

While research shows that responsive teaching fosters students' disciplinary learning and equitable opportunities for participation, there is yet much to know about how teachers come to be responsive to their students' experiences in the science classroom. In this work, we set out to examine whether and how engaging teachers as learners in doing science may support responsive instructional practices.

Author/Presenter

Lama Z. Jaber

Vesal Dini

David Hammer

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2021
Short Description

In this article, the authors present evidence from teachers' reflections that this stability was supported by the teachers' intellectual and emotional experiences as learners. Specifically, they argue that engaging in extended scientific inquiry provided a basis for the teachers having epistemic empathy for their students—their tuning into and appreciating their students' intellectual and emotional experiences in science, which in turn supported teachers' responsiveness in the classroom.

Strengthening STEM Teaching in Native American Serving Schools through Long-Term, Culturally Responsive Professional Development

Principal Investigator:

This is a 4-year, level II Exploratory study within the teaching strand of DRK12. The research explores the functioning and impact of a nationally-developed STEM professional development model within the Navajo Nation. Teacher participants represent the entire K-12 grade range and multiple content areas, and they all participate in an innovative STEM-content, culturally responsive, 8-month professional development fellowship. We explore the extent to which culturally responsive principles are evident in their self-authored curriculum units.

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