Improving the preparation of novice secondary science teachers for English learners: A proof of concept study

Abstract

This proof of concept study investigated a secondary science teacher preparation intervention in six university programs across Arizona, California, and Texas. Researchers and science method instructors (SMIs) collaboratively restructured respective science method courses to hold fidelity to an interrelated set of instructional practices that attend to science learning as envisioned in a Framework for K–12 Science Education, while also creating contextualized spaces for language and literacy development targeted to English learners (ELs), but also supportive of “mainstream” students. We observed the teaching of SMIs and preservice teachers (PSTs) with observation rubrics to gauge the fidelity to which they implemented practices. Across programs, SMIs provided opportunities for PSTs to experience the instructional practices as intended, although there was less opportunity for pedagogical development around them. The strongest evidence of PST fidelity to the intervention was found for two practices: “Increasing student interaction” and “Facilitating student talk.” Considerable variation was found across the programs for other practices including some evidence of negative effects. We discuss results in terms of promises for preparing novice secondary science teachers, as well as future directions to overcome challenges that researchers, SMIs, and novice teachers are likely to face when preparing novice science teachers.

Framing, Adapting, and Applying: Learning to Contextualize Science Activity in Multilingual Science Classrooms

“…We share what we have learned about introducing changes in a set of secondary science teacher education programs for these contextbased approaches to science instruction. These insights and ideas stem from our previous work (Tolbert, Stoddart, Lyon, & Solis, 2014;Lyon, Tolbert, Solis, Stoddart, & Bunch, 2016;Lyon, Stoddart, Bunch, Tolbert, Salinas, & Solis, 2018;Tolbert & Knox, 2016) and our exploration of pre-service teachers' practices in our program. Contextualizing Science Activity is one of the key practices of the SSTELLA instructional framework.…”

“…SSTELLA attends to the relationships among science, language, and sociocultural contexts through four dimensions of instruction: Contextualizing Science Activity, Scientific Sense-making, Scientific Discourse, and Language and Literacy, referred to as the SSTELLA Instructional Framework (Tolbert et al, 2014). Evidence from our work has shown how novice teachers' practices in multilingual classrooms are supported by the SSTELLA Framework, particularly those related to student talk, student interaction, and literacy (Lyon et al, 2018).…”

“…Evidence from prior research on teacher preparation has consistently demonstrated that contextualizing science instruction is the least observed instructional practice of those that have been identified as integral to culturally responsive science teaching (Bravo et al, 2014;Lyon et al, 2018;Patchen & Cox-Petersen, 2008;Stoddart et al, 2013;Stoddart & Mosqueda, 2015;Teemant, Wink, & Tyra, 2011)-even when preservice teachers' beliefs about contextualizing activity are largely positive (Bravo et al, 2014). The task for us as science teacher education practitioners and researchers is both to better understand the particular challenges associated with contextualizing instruction, and to find ways to support novice teachers in developing and refining their abilities to contextualize science activities in multilingual classrooms.…”

“…Given what we have learned about contextualization from our research (Bravo et al, 2014;Lyon et al, 2018;Stoddart et al, 2013), we have developed several approaches to support teacher learning in these areas. We are currently exploring how these approaches work, how they impact novice teacher practice, and how they correlate with opportunities to learn for EBL students.…”

“…For this article, we have purposefully selected two video-recorded teaching events that represent the types of approaches to Contextualizing Science Activity that are reflective of our challenges to support pre-service teachers in practice (Lyon et al, 2018). The first case is Mr. Ramos (pseudonym), a novice teacher from the baseline cohort of this study, who did not participate in the re-structured science methods course during his teacher education.…”