Professional development needs to be deeply connected to specific content (Garet et al., 2001). In the NGSS, content includes all three dimensions: practices, cross- cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. Professional learning opportunities should be designed such that teachers grapple with both the science itself and how students think and learn about that science. Interventions that focus primarily on deepening teachers’ knowledge of disciplinary core ideas are likely to be insuf- ficient. While knowledge of the science itself is essential and lack of such knowl- edge may pose challenges for teachers (Kanter and Konstantopoulos, 2010), such knowledge is not sufficient for teachers to be able to translate what they have learned into effective lessons for students (Heller et al., 2012). Teachers’ knowl- edge of how to support student learning typically draws on general principles about learning (e.g., the importance of building on students’ prior conceptions), but it critically depends on understanding those general principles in the context of specific disciplinary core ideas (e.g., the nature of matter) and recognizing the
1This section is based on a paper by Reiser (2013) written for the Invitational Research
BOX 4-2
EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS IN SCIENCE
Simply telling teachers about the new standards or focusing solely on improving their science content knowl- edge is unlikely to lead to the kinds of sustained changes in instruction that will be needed to support the NGSS. Instead, science teachers need opportunities to examine students’ thinking and analyze instruction. Two recent studies of professional development offer examples of these kinds of learning opportunities for science teachers. In a large-scale study of 270 elementary teachers in 39 school districts across 6 states, Heller et al. (2012) com- pared four professional development courses for elementary teachers. All four courses involved the same science content; they differed in the ways they incorporated analyses of students’ thinking and analyses of instruction. Each of the 4 intervention models involved 24 hours of contact time divided into eight 3-hour sessions:
• In one intervention model, teachers discussed narrative descriptions of extended examples from actual classrooms, which included student work, classroom discussions, and descriptions of the teachers’ thinking and behavior.
• In a second intervention model, teachers examined and discussed their own students’ work in the context of ongoing lessons.
• In the third intervention model, teachers engaged in reflection and analysis about their own learning as they participated in science investigations: they considered which ideas could be learned through the inves- tigation, tricky or surprising concepts, and implications for students’ learning.
• The fourth course served as a control group and involved only science content.
challenges that students frequently face in making sense of the particular new con- tent ideas (Putnam and Borko, 2000).
Similarly, professional development to introduce science practices should not just provide generic guidance about how to support argumentation or how to help students develop science models. Instead, the practices are best developed, for both teachers and students, in the context of particular core ideas. For example, teach- ers need to be able to help students develop explanatory accounts of phenomena using the particle model of matter or evidence-based arguments about popula- tion biology or to design devices to minimize or maximize the transfer of thermal energy. The specific subject area lends context to the practice at the same time it
Teacher and Leader Learning 43 All four intervention models improved both teachers’ and students’ scores on tests of science content knowl-
edge more than the scores of teachers and students in the control group. In addition, the effects of the interven- tion on teachers’ students were stronger in the follow-up year than during the year of intervention.
The Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STeLLA) project featured video-based analysis of instruc- tional practice aimed at upper elementary teachers. The year-long professional development experience for teachers focused on how to create a coherent science storyline for students and how to elicit, support, and chal- lenge students’ thinking about specific science concepts. The study involved 48 teachers: 32 participated in the STeLLA program and 16 participated in a content-only program (Roth et al., 2011):
• Both groups participated in a 3-week summer institute focused on science content.
• The STeLLA participants also engaged in video analysis during the summer and in follow-up sessions during the year; they met in small groups facilitated by a program leader to discuss video cases. Teachers began with cases from unfamiliar teachers and later discussed videocases based on their own classrooms.
• The lessons of the STeLLA teachers were analyzed to determine whether they were using the strategies related to creating storylines and supporting students’ thinking.
Both the STeLLA teachers and the teachers in the comparison group showed gains in science content knowl- edge, but the STeLLA teachers made greater gains. In addition, videotaped samples of lessons from the STeLLA teachers’ classrooms show that by the end of the year they were implementing many of the strategies related to supporting a science content storyline and supporting students’ thinking. Students of teachers who participated in the program showed greater learning gains in the year after the teachers’ participation than students in the year previous to the teacher’s participation.
enriches teachers’ understanding of how student engagement in these practices facilitates and deepens student learning.