Teach like a researcher: The contours and implications of a teaching experiments approach to preparing secondary STEM teachers Ian Parker Renga, Ed.M. School of Education, University of Colorado at Boulder EMERGING THEMES & TRENDS CU Teach program – based on UTeach model – aims to improve the quality of STEM teaching among beginning teachers with methods courses like Classroom Interactions. Next Gen. Science Standards emphasize instructing students in ‘scientific ways of thinking’ (e.g., making evidence-based claims). How one learns teaching may affect how one teaches students to learn (Hiebert et al., 2003). National Academy of Science (2010) maintains that more research is needed on STEM teacher preparation. Situative view (Borko, 2004; Lave & Wenger, 1991): learning as situated within communities of practice and evident in social participation, activity, and discourse. Human reasoning and “task performance” is inherently hypothetico-deductive (Lawson, 2005), though we learn how to formally develop knowledge in this way. Beginners are ‘learning teaching’ during preparation, or learning how to learn about their practice (Lampert, 2009). Common features of formal preparation in professional practices (Grossman et al., 2009):  Representations of practices common to the profession  Decomposition of practices into constituent parts  Approximations of practice by beginners “that are more or less proximal to the profession”  Proximal to research community, too? Research Questions 1.What does it look like to learn teaching practices within a STEM teaching methods course? 2.What, if anything, makes the course instruction and practices specific to the STEM disciplines? 3.What are the implications of having STEM teachers develop knowledge of their practice in ways similar to how knowledge is developed in STEM disciplines? STUDY METHODS INTRODUCTION Potential Strengths  Narrows practices to those relevant to individual beginners  Develops professional authority as beginners learn effective ways to assess quality of their instruction  Positions the instructor as a fellow learner of practice rather than an expert or judge of quality  Alignment between disciplinary and instructional epistemologies and practices – teachers are doing what they teach Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teaching learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), Grossman, P., Compton, C., Igra, D., Ronfeldt, M., Shahan, E., & Williamson, P.W. (2009). Teaching practice: A cross-professional perspective. Teachers College Record, 111 (9), 2055–2100. Hiebert, J., Morris, A.K., and Glass, B. (2003). Learning to learn to teach: An “experiment” model for teaching and teacher preparation in mathematics. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 6, Lampert, M. (2009). Learning Teaching in, from, and for Practice: What Do We Mean? Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), Lawson, A.E. (2005). What is the role of induction and deduction in reasoning and scientific inquiry? Journal of Research in Science Teaching 42(6), Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge university press. National Research Council (2010). Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. HOW MODELS OF TEACHER PREP MAY SITUATE BEGINNERS IN COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE STRENGTHS & LIMITATIONS OF A TEACHING EXPERIMENTS APPROACH TO TEACHER PREP REFERENCES “Teaching is an enormously difficult job that looks easy.” --David Labaree (2004) THEORETICAL & CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Study period: one semester of Classroom Interactions Detailed field notes of class observations and students’ teaching at field sites; audio of class discussions (in CU classroom) Artifact analysis (syllabus, handouts, student work) Semi-structured interviews of students and instructors on preferences, expectations, and experiences in course Development and refinement of codes to determine trends in data Research Community Professional Teaching Community School Community Teaching Experiments Model (e.g., Hiebert et al., 2003) Explicitly hypothetico-deductive: “…transforms the lesson into an experiment that yields an empirical test of a teacher’s local theory of how students learn and how instruction facilitates learning…” Practice-based Training Model (e.g., Univ. of Michigan, ‘Teaching Works’) Focus on mastery of prescriptive, research- based ‘instructional moves’ More deliberate opportunities to practice instructional moves and get feedback from expert teachers EDUC 4060/5060: Classroom Interactions Part of the CU Teach Program; prerequisites include Step 1 & Step 2 Built around iterative learning cycle: analyze  enact  reflect Practicum-linked: 40 hours in secondary math or science classroom Student majors: math (n=9), science (n=6), law (n=1), accounting (n=1) Stated goals from course syllabus:  “…understand how content and pedagogy are intertwined...”  “…see how theories of learning and teaching play out in real instructional settings by designing and enacting instructional activities and then evaluating the outcomes of those activities on the basis of student artifacts (i.e., what students say, do, or create).” 1. Emphasis on ‘evidence’ in instructor discourse. For example, after watching MET video on ‘setting norms’, students shared thoughts and instructor said, “I’m pushing people to provide evidence for things you think…” (Class Observation_091812). 2. Student discourse during in-class debriefs of teaching was more focused on content and lesson design strategies – whether or not students ‘got’ the material from the activities – than on features of instructional enactment or quality. 3. Hypothetico-deductively structured, so instructional practices treated as ‘hypotheses’ to be tested and analyzed, with more practices represented than approximated or ‘tested’ by students. Students often said that ‘tested’ practices were useful while those not ‘tested’ were described as being “only good in theory”. Potential Limitations  Requires time as beginners tinker with a few practices  May confer too much authority on beginners and leave practical theories and personal preferences unchallenged  Beginners may end up lacking competence in key instructional practices  May lead to a reductive view of learning and teaching (i.e., the ‘banking model’)