Classroom Practice

In today’s technologically complex and connected world, students’ needs to develop competencies and confidence with data have never been greater. A new On the Same Wavelength blog post shares work from a National Science Foundation project, Boosting Data Science Teaching and Learning in STEM. The authors describe effective practices for engaging all students with data in the classroom.

Perez , L. & Lionberger, K. (2023, May 3). Opening the door to data science in STEM classrooms. NextGenScience.

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a professional development program rooted in knowledge generation theory. Specifically, it sought to examine the changes in teachers' three orientations following the completion of the first-year workshop, and how these changes impacted their classroom implementation. This investigation takes the form of a multiple-case study of twelve K-5 teachers. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations.

In-service professional development is important for improving teaching. However, little research has examined how the roles, beliefs, and backgrounds of the individuals providing professional development can best be leveraged to create effective professional development programmes. A particularly understudied group are community-based On-Site Teacher Educators (OSTEs) who can serve as the bridge between university-based faculty and school employees. OSTEs are aware of the realities of classroom spaces, yet work outside of them, giving them a hybrid capacity to support teacher learning.

National standards that centre on the underpinning epistemic practices of the discipline has emphasised the need for teachers to focus much more on knowledge generation approaches to learning. Adopting a complexity perspective, we attempt to understand how teachers shift over time by examining their epistemic orientation to knowledge generation and their understanding of the nature of the epistemic tools of language, dialogue and argument that underpin these environments.

With an ultimate goal of characterizing teachers' movement toward understanding the epistemic complexity of generative learning environments, this study refers to adaptive teaching expertise (AdTex) as a developmental teaching capacity observable through a teacher's ability to utilize various resources to address the epistemic complexity of knowledge generation practices. The analysis and discussions centered on how teachers develop and utilize epistemic orientation and understandings of epistemic tools for adaptive teaching, making this study distinct from previous research on AdTex.

Abstract concepts, such as gravity, may provide the perfect opportunity to bring phenomena into the classroom. As a knowledge generation strategy, summarizing can foster that opportunity. Using phenomena and summary writing together might help student learning since it requires making connections between their ideas and words to explain the natural phenomena. This article describes how anchoring phenomena and summary writing were integrated into a cohesive unit by using five generative activities that include different language and epistemic practices.

Framework to organize foothold practices for centering justice in science education.

We consider how intentionally planned and facilitated whole-class conversations can “make space” for students’ sense-making about engineering problems and solutions and position them with epistemic authority to contribute to collective thinking. We conducted a case study on a first-grade engineering lesson that included whole-class Idea Generation and Design Synthesis Talks. We found students sense-making as they refined their design proposals and analyses in light of classmates’ contributions to the whole-class conversations.

We consider how intentionally planned and facilitated whole-class conversations can “make space” for students’ sense-making about engineering problems and solutions and position them with epistemic authority to contribute to collective thinking. We conducted a case study on a first-grade engineering lesson that included whole-class Idea Generation and Design Synthesis Talks. We found students sense-making as they refined their design proposals and analyses in light of classmates’ contributions to the whole-class conversations.

Teacher-facilitated whole-class conversations can help elementary students apply the full power of the NGSS science and engineering practices to an engineering design process. In this article we describe and provide examples for five kinds of Design Talks. Each type of Design Talk centers on a different framing question and is facilitated by specific prompts that help students voice their ideas and make connections to others' ideas.