- Year 2018
- NSF Noyce Award # 1557283
- First Name Trish
- Last Name Stoddart
- Discipline Other: Science and Mathematics Education
- Co-PI(s)
Elisa Stone, University of California, Berkeley, emstone@berkeley.edu
Alan J. Daly, University of California, San Diego, ajdaly@ucsd.edu
Sandra J. Carlson, University of California, Davis, sjcarlson@ucdavis.edu
Julie A. Bianchini, University of California, Santa Barbara, jbianchi@ucsb.edu - Presenters
Alexandria Hansen, University of California, Santa Barbara, alexandria.killian@gmail.com
Stacey Carpenter, University of California, Santa Barbara, scarpenter@education.ucsb.edu
Julie Bianchini, University of California, Santa Barbara, jbianchi@ucsb.edu
Elisa Stone, University of California, Berkeley, emstone@berkeley.edu
Cheryl Forbes, University of California, San Diego, cforbes@ucsd.edu
Erik Arevalo, University of California, Santa Barbara, erik_arevalo@ucsb.edu
Meghan Macias, University of California, Santa Barbara, mfmacias23@gmail.com
Andrew Matschiner, University of California, San Diego, amatschi@ucsd.edu
Maryam Moeini, University of California, Berkeley, mmoeinimeybodi@berkeley.edu
Need
SMTRI is a Phase IV Noyce award. It addresses a critical challenge in STEM education: to investigate how to prepare beginning secondary science and mathematics teachers to provide effective instruction to an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse student population. The SMTRI project brings together researchers from six University of California (UC) campuses to examine the impact of a UC undergraduate STEM education program (CalTeach) and graduate programs of teacher education on the development of beginning teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices in secondary science and mathematics education. More specifically, it examines the efficacy of UC programs in preparing beginning teachers to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CSSS-M), particularly as they relate to the teaching of English learners (ELs).
Goals
As introduced above, the goal of SMTRI is to contribute to the knowledge base on how to prepare beginning science and mathematics teachers to effectively teach all students, including ELs, in high-needs secondary schools in California. To do so, we are following beginning teachers from each of six UC campuses across their preservice year and into their first and second years of teaching. Here, we focus on a subset of preservice science teachers from Year 1 of our study (2016-2017). We have two primary research questions: How did the preservice science teachers’ understanding of reform-minded teaching change over the course of their program? How did preservice teachers conceive of students? funds of knowledge and resources in connection to their classroom teaching?
Approach
Our conceptual framework consists of two parts. One, the recent NGSS and CCSS-M provide a new vision for science and mathematics education in the U.S.; these reforms call for engaging students in disciplinary-specific practices to reason and make sense of content. Two, our understanding of effective instruction for ELs was informed by four key principles, including building on and using students? funds of knowledge and resources. This principle asks beginning teachers both to use?ELs??home languages as a resource for learning and to recognize the diversity of?ELs??interests, experiences, and connections to the community. Our data collection efforts include administering surveys, conducting interviews, and collecting video records of classroom instruction. Here, we qualitatively analyzed pre- and post-interviews conducted with six of the 49 preservice teachers who participated in Year 1. Each of these six spoke at least two languages and drew from experiences in at least two cultures.
Outcomes
Our six preservice science teacher participants showed an increase in their awareness and ability to enact reform- and equity-minded instruction over the course of the program. Participants reflected on their own backgrounds and discussed the impact of their experiences with diverse languages and cultures on their teaching. In their post-interviews, preservice teachers also discussed more examples of each of the four principles of effective EL instruction than in their pre-interviews: attending to academic language demands and supports, providing cognitively demanding work, engaging students in language production opportunities, and drawing from students’ funds of knowledge and resources. However, while participants discussed more examples of using students’ funds of knowledge and resources in the post-interview, they more often attended to students’ prior knowledge and everyday life rather than students’ home life and language, culture, and community resources.
Broader Impacts
This work contributes to our understanding of how to improve the preparation of beginning secondary science and mathematics teachers: to identify program structures, principles, and strategies that are effective in supporting beginning teachers to implement the new standards and to teach all students, including ELs. Next steps of this work involve analysis of interview data from all participating beginning teachers; examination of interview data in interaction with surveys and video records of classroom instruction; and comparison of the knowledge, beliefs, and practices held by participants as preservice teachers versus as first- and second-year teachers.
