222 Geoscience Education VIII: Effective Practices for Broader Impacts in K–12 Education

Wednesday, 12 October 2011
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 208AB

COMBINING INNOVATIVE CURRICULUM WITH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO SUPPORT TEACHERS IN TEACHING EARTH SCIENCE THROUGH INQUIRY

Paper number: 222-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:30 AM – 10:45 AM

Authors

Abstract

Reform-based documents in science education call for teaching that mirrors how science is practiced (AAAS, 1989; NRC, 1996). Unfortunately, few K-12 teachers have had adequate experience conducting scientific investigations, making it difficult to model scientific inquiry in their classrooms. This is especially true at the elementary level where teachers have little or no formal science training and lack familiarity with the fundamentals of scientific inquiry and inquiry-based instruction. There have been a variety of curriculum projects aimed at supporting teachers in teaching science through inquiry such as the curriculum reforms of the 1960’s as well as more recent projects. There have also been many professional development (PD) programs that have supported teachers in learning about inquiry and other PD programs that have placed teachers in labs and field-based settings where they had experience conducting scientific inquiry. These projects have been effective in either providing teachers with much needed materials or helping them to learn about inquiry, and at times giving them experiences at the “elbows of scientists”. However, we argue that in order to truly support teachers in teaching science through inquiry, especially at the elementary-level, there is a need for the development of curricular materials, high-quality teacher PD, and opportunities to participate in research.

In this presentation, we report on a National Science Foundation-funded project that engaged teachers and their students in an authentic paleontological investigation aimed at understanding how organisms in the distant geologic past (Devonian marine assemblages) changed in response to changes in the environment. We describe both the curricular materials and teacher PD designed to enhance teachers’ competence and confidence in teaching earth science concepts. We observed a significant change in project teachers’ subject matter knowledge and their views of inquiry and nature of science after the PD, but no significant change in comparison teachers’ knowledge or views over the same time period. In addition, we observed evidence of many teachers successfully carrying out the inquiry-based curriculum in their classrooms after the PD when prior to the PD many struggled to teach science as inquiry.