Collaborative Research: Professional Learning Resources for Customizing Curricula to Support Elementary Students in Using Full Communicative Repertoires for Scientific Sensemaking

About This Grant

Scientific sensemaking, such as using data to reason and develop explanations about phenomena, is core to learning and doing science. Oral and written language, visual and numerical representations, physical models, and other forms of communication are vital to scientific sensemaking, yet research has not yet fully explored how science curricula can be customized to account for the unique communicative repertoires of individual learners within elementary science classes. This project will address this important gap in practice by developing a suite of tools that elementary teachers can use to customize existing open-source, standards-aligned science curricula, such that these curricula are better able to support students with a range of communicative strengths, including multilingualism. Specifically, the project team will partner with elementary educators to co-develop customization tools to accompany peer-reviewed, open-source science education curricula. These customization tools will serve as the basis for professional learning modules on how to support learners who speak one or more languages, in developing and using their full communicative repertoires while engaging in scientific sensemaking, as guided by the curricula. Subsequent research will explore whether and how the professional learning experiences influence participating teachers' beliefs, preparedness, instructional practice and curricular customizations. The resulting empirically based professional learning modules and customization tools will be disseminated widely to achieve national impacts in science learning for elementary students. In this multisite Design and Development project, researchers and elementary teachers will co-design standards-aligned curricular customization tools that support scientific sensemaking among third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students with varying communicative strengths. Design-based research will explore how the co-design process constrains or enables new beliefs and instructional practices among 24 elementary teachers. The resulting curricular customization tools may include tools for evaluating existing language opportunities, such as linguistic resources that are currently used for sensemaking; tools for enhancing sensemaking displays, such that they include a broader array of representations; and records of classroom customizations that illustrate how customizations can be enacted across a range of elementary classes. In the second phase of the project, these customization tools will be shared with a larger set of elementary educators in the context of research-aligned professional learning experiences. Mixed methods research will explore whether and how these educators' beliefs, preparedness, instructional practices, and curricular customizations shift as they participate in the professional learning. Specifically, the research team will analyze teacher surveys, video recordings from the professional learning sessions and classroom observations, and artifacts from the educators' curricular customizations. The resulting empirical research will advance knowledge regarding how teacher professional learning, and associated materials, can be designed to better account for the unique compositions of elementary classrooms across the nation. This project is supported by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) which seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.