Moving Beyond Pedagogy: Developing Elementary Teachers' Adaptive Expertise in Using the Epistemic Complexity of Science

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emphasize the integration of scientific knowledge and the practices of science, a recognition that science classrooms are complex learning environments. Meeting this expectation requires teachers to move beyond traditional routines of practice to become adaptive experts who can adjust their teaching to maximize learning in varied classroom situations. The project will work with teachers to implement a three-year professional development program to assist teachers in the development of adaptive expertise through implementation of an argument-based inquiry approach.

Full Description

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) emphasize the integration of scientific knowledge and the practices of science, a recognition that science classrooms are complex learning environments. Meeting this expectation requires teachers to move beyond traditional routines of practice to become adaptive experts who can adjust their teaching to maximize learning in varied classroom situations. A teacher who has adaptive expertise is defined as someone who can self-assess and strategically adjust decision-making before, during and after teaching episodes. To become adaptive experts, teachers must understand the foundational ways that scientific knowledge is advanced and develop knowledge of, and practices related to, using argument, language, and dialogical environments--individually and collectively--as tools for learning science. To effectively use these tools requires teachers to shift from viewing science teaching as the transfer or replication of knowledge through routines of practices to one in which students are participants in a more cognitively based approach to learning. How teachers develop adaptive expertise for NGSS-aligned learning environments is still little understood. This project will examine the complex nature of the relationship between these learning tools and teacher orientation that enables teachers to develop adaptive expertise over the course of a multi-year professional development program.

The project will work with 150 Grade 3-5 teachers in Iowa and Alabama to implement a three-year professional development program to assist teachers develop adaptive expertise. Through implementation of an argument-based inquiry approach focused on development of adaptiveness, teachers will be supported as they shift their expertise from routine to adaptiveness. Project data will include teachers' implementation of the approach, their understanding of science argument, and their shifting epistemic orientation. The project will examine selected case studies of teachers to better understand the variations in development of adaptive expertise. The project outcome will be a model of adaptive expertise that can be used by in-service and pre-service educators to advance teacher practices towards adaptive expertise. The aim is to design ways to transfer adaptive expertise to students in STEM. The mixed-method project will integrate analyses with a focus on understanding complexity, using large-scale quantitative data.

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