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1. Investigating the impact of research-based professional development on teacher learning and classroom practice: Findings from computer science education

   Mouza, C. ; Codding, D. ; Pollock, L. ( January 2022 , Computers and education)

   As the field of computer science (CS) is gaining increased attention, the need for qualified teachers is rapidly growing. Yet little is still known about the design features, implementation, and outcomes of professional development programs in computing. The purpose of this study is threefold: (a) examine a CS professional development program built around high-quality design features reported in the research literature, (b) investigate the impact of the program on participating teachers’ learning and classroom practice, and (c) identify specific design features that facilitated changes in teacher learning and practice. The study employed a mixed-methods design. Data were collected from multiple sources including, pre and post survey data on teacher knowledge of CS content, pedagogy, and technology (N = 94), as well as interviews and classroom implementation data from eight case study participants. Findings from this work indicated that participants reported improvements in their knowledge of CS content, pedagogy, and technology. They also applied new learning into their practice, though implementation varied among participants. Responding on the value of the professional development design features, teachers noted the importance of focusing on CS content knowledge as well as opportunities to engage with pedagogical practices for teaching computing. Findings also indicated the important role of contextualized follow-up classroom support in the implementation of new learning into practice. These findings have implications for the design of professional development programs grounded in best practices with the potential to support broad efforts intended to prepare teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to deliver CS education. 

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2. Transformations in Elementary Teachers' Pedagogical Reasoning: Studying Teacher Learning in an Online Graduate Program in Engineering Education

   Watkins, Jessica ; Portsmore, Merredith ; Swanson, Rebecca ( January 2019 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This research paper describes a study of elementary teacher learning in an online graduate program in engineering education for in-service teachers. While the existing research on teachers in engineering focuses on their disciplinary understandings and beliefs (Hsu, Cardella, & Purzer, 2011; Martin, et al., 2015; Nadelson, et al., 2015; Van Haneghan, et al., 2015), there is increasing attention to teachers' pedagogy in engineering (Capobianco, Delisi, & Radloff, 2018). In our work, we study teachers' pedagogical sense-making and reflection, which, we argue, is critical for teaching engineering design. This study takes place in [blinded] program, in which teachers take four graduate courses over fifteen months. The program was designed to help teachers not only learn engineering content, but also shift their thinking and practice to be more responsive to their students. Two courses focus on pedagogy, including what it means to learn engineering and instructional approaches to support this learning. These courses consist of four main elements, in which teachers: 1) Read data-rich engineering education articles to reflect on learning engineering; 2) Participate in online video clubs, looking at classroom videos of students’ engineering and commenting on what they notice; 3) Conduct interviews with learners about the mechanism of a pull-back car; and 4) Plan and teach engineering lessons, collecting and analyzing video from their classrooms. In the context of this program, we ask: what stances do teachers take toward learning and teaching engineering design? What shifts do we observe in their stances? We interviewed teachers at the start of the program and after each course. In addition to reflecting on their learning and teaching, teachers watched videos of students’ engineering and discussed what they saw as relevant for teaching engineering. We informally compared summaries from previous interviews to get a sense of changes in how participants talked about engineering, how they approached teaching engineering, and what they noticed in classroom videos. Through this process, we identified one teacher to focus on for this paper: Alma is a veteran 3rd-5th grade science teacher in a rural, racially-diverse public school in the southeastern region of the US. We then developed content logs of Alma's interviews and identified emergent themes. To refine these themes, we looked for confirming and disconfirming evidence in the interviews and in her coursework in the program. We coded each interview for these themes and developed analytic memos, highlighting where we saw variability and stability in her stances and comparing across interviews to describe shifts in Alma's reasoning. It was at this stage that we narrowed our focus to her stances toward the engineering design process (EDP). In this paper, we describe and illustrate shifts we observed in Alma's reasoning, arguing that she exhibited dramatic shifts in her stances toward teaching and learning the EDP. At the start of the program, she was stable in treating the EDP as a series of linear steps that students and engineers progress through. After engaging and reflecting on her own engineering in the first course, she started to express a more fluid stance when talking more abstractly about the EDP but continued to take it up as a linear process in her classroom teaching. By the end of the program, Alma exhibited a growing stability across contexts in her stance toward the EDP as a fluid set of overlapping practices that students and engineers could engage in. 

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3. A spatiotemporal analysis of teacher practices in supporting student learning and engagement in an AI-enabled classroom

   Karumbaiah, S. ; Borchers, C. ; Falhs, A. C. ; Holstein, K. ; Rummel, N. ; Aleven, V. ( July 2023 , Springer)

   Wang, N. ; Rebolledo-Mendez, G. ; Matsuda, N. ; Santos, O.C. ; Dimitrova, V. (Ed.)

   Research indicates that teachers play an active and important role in classrooms with AI tutors. Yet, our scientific understanding of the way teacher practices around AI tutors mediate student learning is far from complete. In this paper, we investigate spatiotemporal factors of student-teacher interactions by analyzing student engagement and learning with an AI tutor ahead of teacher visits (defined as episodes of a teacher being in close physical proximity to a student) and immediately following teacher visits. To conduct such integrated, temporal analysis around the moments when teachers visit students, we collect fine-grained, time-synchronized data on teacher positions in the physical classroom and student interactions with the AI tutor. Our case study in a K12 math classroom with a veteran math teacher provides some indications on factors that might affect a teacher’s decision to allocate their limited classroom time to their students and what effects these interactions have on students. For instance, teacher visits were associated more with students’ in-the-moment behavioral indicators (e.g., idleness) than a broader, static measure of student needs such as low prior knowledge. While teacher visits were often associated with positive changes in student behavior afterward (e.g., decreased idleness), there could be a potential mismatch between students visited by the teacher and who may have needed it more at that time (e.g., students who were disengaged for much longer). Overall, our findings indicate that teacher visits may yield immediate benefits for students but also that it is challenging for teachers to meet all needs - suggesting the need for better tool support. 

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4. Intelligent teacher dashboards that support students’ self-regulated learning, engagement, and teachers’ decision making

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.570229  

   Wiedbusch, M. ( April 2021 , Frontiers in education)

   Michalsky, Tova ; Moos, Daniel (Ed.)

   Teachers’ ability to self-regulate their own learning is closely related to their competency to enhance self-regulated learning (SRL) in their students. Accordingly, there is emerging research for the design of teacher dashboards that empower instructors by providing access to quantifiable evidence of student performance and SRL processes. Typically, they capture evidence of student learning and performance to be visualized through activity traces (e.g., bar charts showing correct and incorrect response rates, etc.) and SRL data (e.g., eye-tracking on content, log files capturing feature selection, etc.) in order to provide teachers with monitoring and instructional tools. Critics of the current research on dashboards used in conjunction with advanced learning technologies (ALTs) such as simulations, intelligent tutoring systems, and serious games, argue that the state of the field is immature and has 1) focused only on exploratory or proof-of-concept projects, 2) investigated data visualizations of performance metrics or simplistic learning behaviors, and 3) neglected most theoretical aspects of SRL including teachers’ general lack of understanding their’s students’ SRL. Additionally, the work is mostly anecdotal, lacks methodological rigor, and does not collect critical process data (e.g. frequency, duration, timing, or fluctuations of cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and motivational (CAMM) SRL processes) during learning with ALTs used in the classroom. No known research in the areas of learning analytics, teacher dashboards, or teachers’ perceptions of students’ SRL and CAMM engagement has systematically and simultaneously examined the deployment, temporal unfolding, regulation, and impact of all these key processes during complex learning. In this manuscript, we 1) review the current state of ALTs designed using SRL theoretical frameworks and the current state of teacher dashboard design and research, 2) report the important design features and elements within intelligent dashboards that provide teachers with real-time data visualizations of their students’ SRL processes and engagement while using ALTs in classrooms, as revealed from the analysis of surveys and focus groups with teachers, and 3) propose a conceptual system design for integrating reinforcement learning into a teacher dashboard to help guide the utilization of multimodal data collected on students’ and teachers’ CAMM SRL processes during complex learning. 

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5. Teacher Experiences in a Community-Based Rural Partnership: Recognizing Community Assets

   https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1316  

   Paradise, T. ; Schilling, M.R. ; Grohs, J. ; Laney, J. ( January 2022 , Journal of precollege engineering education research)

   The purpose of this research study is to understand teacher experiences throughout their second year of engagement in the Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools partnership. This partnership is an assets-based community partnership in a rural environment between middle school teachers, regional industry, and university affiliates that is focused on implementing recurrent, hands-on, culturally relevant engineering activities for middle school students. This qualitative study uses constant comparative methodology informed by grounded theory on teacher interviews to capture both teacher experiences in the partnership as well as teacher-identified assets in their classrooms and school communities. Using the sensitizing concepts of pedagogical content knowledge, self-efficacy, and the Interconnected Model of Teacher Growth, this study found that while teachers experienced the program differently depending on their contextual setting of their schools, all teachers expressed shifts in their recognition of and value placed on community assets. Findings also suggest that teachers greatly value involving industry and university partners in the classroom to highlight the applications of engineering in their communities and support a reimagination of engineering conceptions and careers for both students and teachers. Teachers reported that the hands-on, team-based, culturally relevant engineering activities engaged learners and showcased individual strengths in ways they otherwise do not see exhibited in their traditional curriculum. The partnership ultimately allowed teachers to identify how assets in schools’ rural communities, beyond those previously identified within their schools, could aid them in further developing and implementing engineering activities. With teachers serving as role models for students, it is important to support teachers’ reimagination of engineering conceptions and integration into the classroom to ultimately increase students’ engineering engagement. Our findings highlight the value of community-based approaches in supporting engineering integration in the classroom and describe the assets that teachers note as being the most significant in their community. 

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