This article reports on a design-based implementation research (DBIR) project that addresses the question: How can classrooms be supported at scale to achieve the threedimensional learning goals of the Next Generation Science Standards? Inherent in this question are three key design challenges: (i) three-dimensional learning-the multidimensional changes in curriculum, assessment, and instruction required for three-dimensional learning; (ii) scale-the necessity of change at multiple scales in educational systems; and (iii) diversity-achieving rigor in our expectations with responsiveness to the enduring diversity of our students, classrooms, and schools. We discuss findings from the Carbon TIME project, which focuses on teaching carbon cycling and energy transformations at multiple scales. Findings focus on design and knowledge building in three interconnected contexts. (i) Assessment-understanding and assessing students' three-dimensional learning. Learning progression frameworks provide insight into students' reasoning and the basis for efficient and reliable classroom and large-scale assessments that have used automated scoring of constructed responses for over 80,000 tests. (ii) Classrooms-classroom discourse and learning communities. Six Carbon TIME units are based on an instructional model that scaffolds students' engagement with phenomena as questioners, investigators, and explainers. The units support substantial learning and reduce the achievement gap between high-pretest and lowpretest students, but with substantial differences among
Our society is currently having serious debates about sources of energy and global climate change. But do students (and the public) have the requisite knowledge to engage these issues as informed citizenry? The learning-progression research summarized here indicates that only 10% of high school students typically have a level of understanding commensurate with that called for in the Next Generation Science Standards. The learning-progression research shows how most students fall short of being able to trace matter and energy through carbon-transforming processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, and combustion that are at the center of analyses of energy use and global climate change. We discuss the more typical types of understanding that students develop and their implications for teaching.
This article reports on analyses of the instructional practices of six middle‐ and high‐school science teachers in the United States who participated in a research‐practice partnership that aims to support reform science education goals at scale. All six teachers were well qualified, experienced, and locally successful—respected by students, parents, colleagues, and administrators—but they differed in their success in supporting students' three‐dimensional learning. Our goal is to understand how the teachers' instructional practices contributed to their similarities in achieving local success and to differences in enabling students' learning, and to consider the implications of these findings for research‐practice partnerships. Data sources included classroom videos supplemented by interviews with teachers and focus students and examples of student work. We also compared students' learning gains by teacher using pre–post assessments that elicited three‐dimensional performances. Analyses of classroom videos showed how all six teachers achieved local success—they led effectively managed classrooms, covered the curriculum by teaching almost all unit activities, and assessed students' work in fair and efficient ways. There were important differences, however, in how teachers engaged students in science practices. Teachers in classrooms where students achieved lower learning gains followed a pattern of practice we describe as activity‐based teaching, in which students completed investigations and hands‐on activities with few opportunities for sensemaking discussions or three‐dimensional science performances. Teachers whose students achieved higher learning gains combined the social stability characteristic of local classroom success with more demanding instructional practices associated with scientific sensemaking and cognitive apprenticeship. We conclude with a discussion of implications for research‐practice partnerships, highlighting how partnerships need to support all teachers in achieving both local and standards‐based success.
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