Putting the Science into Professional Learning Communities Susan Mundry Deputy Director Learning Innovations at WestEd

Professional Learning Communities for Science Teaching- Lessons from Research and Practice CT Science Supervisors Association April 28, 2010

So Much Reform So Little Change… Charles Payne’s analysis of change in urban schools.

Dr. Payne’s Assessment We have been too obsessed with finding out “What Works” and looking for the answer. Not investing wisely in building the social capital, capacity, beliefs of staff to grow and achieve best practice. We most certainly underestimate what it takes to implement and sustain new “programs.”

The “Fad du Jour” Danger

PLCs Done Right Show Promise Rick DuFour and Robert Eaker (1998, 2002, 2004) suggest staff in effective schools work together to answer three critical questions: (1) Exactly what is it we want all students to learn? (2) How do we know if they learned it? (3) What will we do if they don’t learn?

5 Research On PLCs Shows several overall benefits for teachers: Reduction in teacher isolation, increased commitment to school mission and goals, collective responsibility for student success, lower rates of absenteeism, and commitments to making changes in practice (Hord, pp ).

Impact on Students Decreased drop out rate Lower absenteeism Larger academic gains Smaller achievement gaps (equitable learning)

What are Key Characteristics of PLCs? Focus on Science Learning Collaborative Culture Focused on Science Learning Collective Inquiry into Science Learning Action Orientation and Experimentation Continuous Improvement Results Orientation

Focus on Learning Faculty develop and are guided by principles and beliefs about learning-- their actions match their beliefs.

Beliefs about Learning Science Think about a school in your district where you may be trying to improve science learning. Read Handout: Variations on a Theme: All Kids Can Learn… Star one variation that best describes the beliefs that are operating in the school or schools you are thinking about. © 2008 Corwin Press. All rights reserved. From A Data Coach’s Guide to Improving Learning for All Students by N. Love, K. E. Stiles, S. Mundry & K. DiRanna

Beliefs about Learning Science Go and stand by the chart with the variation of the school you starred. In groups of 4-5, discuss how the beliefs are supporting or hindering improvement in science learning. © 2008 Corwin Press. All rights reserved. From A Data Coach’s Guide to Improving Learning for All Students by N. Love, K. E. Stiles, S. Mundry & K. DiRanna

Beliefs about Learning Science Untape the chart and look at the lists of what the schools do when students do not learn and what teachers see as the causes for students not learning. Discuss your reactions to these lists: Does this lens on the school alter your choice? Why or why not? © 2008 Corwin Press. All rights reserved. From A Data Coach’s Guide to Improving Learning for All Students by N. Love, K. E. Stiles, S. Mundry & K. DiRanna

Choose your School Go and stand by the variation that best represents the school you would want to send your own child/grandchild/relative to. Look at the list of what the school does when students do not learn and what teachers see as the causes for students not learning. Discuss your reactions: Does this lens on the school alter your choice? Why or why not? Do any of you want to change your selection? If so, move to another corner. © 2008 Corwin Press. All rights reserved. From A Data Coach’s Guide to Improving Learning for All Students by N. Love, K. E. Stiles, S. Mundry & K. DiRanna

What are Key Characteristics of PLCs? Focus on Science Learning Collaborative Culture Focused on Science Learning Collective Inquiry into Science Learning Action Orientation and Experimentation Continuous Improvement Results Orientation

Our Underlying Beliefs Teachers, like other professionals, must possess and continue to build their own specialized knowledge base. Teachers, like other professionals, should be engaged in collegial professional learning communities that are guided by goals for student learning and focused on ongoing improvement. (Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, Mundry, Love & Hewson, 2010)

Teacher Knowledge General Pedagogical Knowledge Content Knowledge Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)

PCK is the specialized knowledge about teaching and learning that helps teachers understand what makes the learning of specific topics easy or difficult for students and develop strategies for representing and formulating subject matter to make it accessible to learners. Shulman, 1986

Major Challenge for PLCs Ensuring that teachers and facilitators of PLC’s have tools to focus their work on appropriate K-12 content and how to teach and assess it effectively. For example: Demonstrating Lesson, Looking at Student Work, Analyzing Curriculum, etc.

When Examining Lessons Research based framework for examining lessons –For example, From Anne Tweed’s book Designing Effective Science Instruction support teachers to design lessons with important research based components. (See figures )

When Looking at Student Work How well do we understand this topic? What big idea does it lead to? Tools are essential! What should students in this grade be expected to know about this topic? What commonly held ideas do children of this age group tend to have? What pre-requisite knowledge is needed to support understanding of this topic?

How Can We Support Teachers? As science leaders we need to provide resources and tools to support the collegial work of teachers in PLCs--Focused on Science Create professional libraries Establish wikis, collaborative work sites for sharing examples that help define best practice Create banks of important learning objectives and model lessons

Curriculum Topic Study Tools (CTS)

Having State and National Standards Is Not Enough… What has been missing is a systematic, scholarly, deliberate process to help educators intellectually engage with standards and research on student learning so they can make effective use of them to improve teaching and learning.

CTS a powerful yet simple process to help PLC’s: Enhance their adult science literacy Explore implications for effective instruction Identify key ideas/skills students need to progress through their K-12 learning Use research on students’ ideas and learning in science to inform teaching Recognize connections within and across topics in science Be a better consumer of their state standards and curriculum materials

CTS Components Curricular topics (147 science curricular topics organized in 11 categories) Collective Body of Resources Study Procedure Using CTS Study Guide Web Site Applications- C.I.A PD Strategies and Modules (Leader’s Guide)

CTS Collective Resources- Experts at Your Fingertips 24/7     Indicates the resource is online  Indicates parts of the resource are online

CTS Topics

A Typical Study Guide Anatomy of a CTS Study Guide

This section helps PLC’s identify what all adults (including teachers) should know for science literacy Anatomy of a Study Guide CTS Section I- Identify Adult Content Knowledge

Science for All Americans However complex the workings of living organisms, they share with all other natural systems the same physical principles of the conservation and transformation of matter and energy. Over long spans of time, matter and energy are transformed among living things, and between them and the physical environment. In these grand-scale cycles, the total amount of matter and energy remains constant, even though their form and location undergo continual change.

This section helps PLC’s identify the concepts, key ideas, level of sophistication, and appropriate terminology related to a topic at different grade levels. Anatomy of a Study Guide Identify Concepts and Specific Ideas

6-8 Benchmark Over a long time, matter is transferred from one organism to another repeatedly and between organisms and their physical environment. As in all material systems, the total amount of matter remains constant, even though its form and location change.

Identify important considerations for instruction- such as phenomena, contexts, effective strategies Anatomy of a Study Guide Consider Instructional Implications

Benchmarks Essay (6-8) In the middle grades, the emphasis is on following matter through ecosystems. Students should trace food webs both on land and in the sea. The food webs that students investigate should first be local ones they can study directly. The use of films of food webs in other ecosystems can supplement their direct investigations but should not substitute for them. Most students see food webs and cycles as involving the creation and destruction of matter, rather than the breakdown and reassembly of invisible units. They see various organisms and materials as consisting of different types of matter that are not convertible into one another. Before they have an understanding of atoms, the notion of reusable building blocks common to plants and animals is quite mysterious. So following matter through ecosystems needs to be linked to their study of atoms.

This section identifies related research, common misconceptions and their sources, ideas children can understand, and difficulties encountered. Anatomy of a Study Guide Examine Research on Student Learning

Benchmarks- Ch 15 Research Middle-school students seem to know that some kind of cyclical process takes place in ecosystems. Some students see only chains of events and pay little attention to the matter involved in processes such as plant growth or animals eating plants. They think the processes involve creating and destroying matter rather than transforming it from one substance to another. Other students recognize one form of recycling through soil minerals but fail to incorporate water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide into matter cycles. Even after specially designed instruction, students cling to their misinterpretations. Instruction that traces matter through the ecosystem as a basic pattern of thinking may help correct these difficulties. (Smith & Anderson, 1986).Smith & Anderson, 1986

This section helps PLC’s examine the K-12 conceptual growth in understanding. Anatomy of a Study Guide Examine Coherency and Articulation

Clarify State and District Standards Curriculum Frameworks Anatomy of a Study Guide This section helps the PLC clarify the meaning and intent of their own state standards or curriculum. Explain how matter moves through ecosystems.

At the bottom of each study guide is a link to the CTS web site, where users can access the CTS database to find optional readings and media resources to supplement individual CTS guides. Anatomy of a Study Guide

Video: Essential Science for Teachers- Life Science. Annenberg/CPB Professional Development Videos at Session 8- Material Cycles in Ecosystems Section I- A scientist describes the cycling of matter in a forest ecosystem. A scientist describes photosynthesis and producers and their main source of matter. A visit to a sewage treatment plant looks at the role of decomposers and decomposition. Two scientists describe material cycling, including carbon and nitrogen cycles. Section II- Third graders are shown considering questions about matter during an investigation involving worm tanks. Section IV- Dr. Tina Grotzer talks about research on ideas children have about decomposition, and the importance of looking at cause and effect in building accurate scientific understandings. Children in the Science Studio discuss their ideas about sources of matter for different links in a food chain.

CTS: The Swiss Army Knife of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for PLC’s Improve adult science literacy (I) Improve knowledge of content teachers teach (I and III) Examine curricular and instructional considerations (II) Identify difficulties and misconceptions (IV) Identify “Big Ideas”, Concepts, Specific Ideas, and Skills (III) Consider developmental implications (II, IV) Examine scope and sequence (III, V) See connections and articulation within and across topics (V) Clarify state standards and district curriculum (VI)

Bring content specific knowledge of teaching and learning science into the center of many PLC structures Looking at Student Work and Examining Student Thinking Collaborative Action Research Video Demonstration Lessons Lesson Study Coaching and Mentoring

Turn and Talk What other tools are resources can you provide so that teacher groups focus their collaborative work on science teaching and learning?

CTS and Probes- Transformative Learning Experiences for Science PLC’s: Create a high level of cognitive dissonance Reveals the disconnect between what teachers thought they knew about standards, student ideas, content, curriculum, etc. and what is actually revealed through the CTS and/or probes

From “Study Tools” to “Studying Students”

Conservation of Matter Demonstrate the Law of the Conservation of Matter

Research on Learning Some children regard the liquid form of a material as di ff ering in weight or mass from the same amount of mass as its solid form. Students cannot understand conservation of matter if they do not understand what matter is. Students have difficulty conserving mass when a gas is involved. Some students do not accept the idea that gases are matter and have mass and weight.

CTS: Identify Specific Ideas (6-8) No matter how substances within a closed system interact with one another, or how they combine or break apart, the total mass of the system remains the same. (BSL) The idea of atoms explains the conservation of matter: If the number of atoms stays the same no matter how the same atoms are rearranged, then their total mass stays the same. (BSL) Substances react chemically in characteristic ways with other substances to form new substances (compounds) with different characteristic properties. In chemical reactions, the total mass is conserved. (NSES)

Provide time, structure, and support for teachers to think through the dissonance Study groups, PLC’s, coaching and mentoring sessions, lesson study, video demonstration lessons, case discussions, action research

Tied to teachers’ own curriculum and instructional materials Embed the dissonance-creating and dissonance resolving into teachers’ actual situations.

Enable teachers to develop new ways of teaching that fit with their new understandings. Refine lessons, consider how to make content more accessible to all students.

Engage teachers in a continuous process of improvement and taking action Regular studies of lessons, CTS topics and examination of student thinking bring to light new ideas and problems related to teaching and learning and provide the evidence teachers need to take action.

Rationale for PLC’s Growing recognition that teachers, like all professionals, need to continue to learn throughout their careers in order to stay current in their subject areas and teach an increasingly challenging curriculum to a diverse body of students. This professional learning can, and should happen within the school setting. As leaders--our job is to inspire others to make PLCs work well and serve science.

“Community and leadership cannot occur if teachers remain isolated from each other. Departments and schools must institute policies and procedures that support teacher collaboration, risk-taking, collegiality with other teachers as well as experts outside of the school environment, and teachers taking on leadership roles within, and outside of the school. Developing this community requires a recognition that professional learning is a lifelong process that is best nurtured within the norms and cultures of the school” Susan Loucks-Horsley