Title: Developing and using a scalable assessment to measure preservice elementary teachers' content knowledge for teaching about matter
Abstract There is strong agreement in science teacher education of the importance of teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT), which includes their subject matter knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge. However, there are limited instruments that can be easily administered and scored on a large scale to assess and study elementary science teachers' CKT. Such measures would support strategic monitoring of large groups of science teachers' CKT and the investigation of comparative questions about science teachers' CKT longitudinally across the professional continuum or across teacher education or professional development sites. To address this gap, this study focused on designing an automatically scorable summative assessment that can be used to measure preservice elementary teachers' (PSETs') CKT in one high‐leverage science content area: matter and its interactions. We conducted a field test of this CKT instrument with 822 PSETs from across the United States and used the response data to examine how this instrument functions as a potential tool for measuring PSETs' CKT in this science content area. Results suggest this instrument is reliable and can be used on large scale to support valid inferences about PSETs' CKT in this content area. In addition, the dimensionality analysis showed that all items measure a single construct of CKT about matter and its interactions, as participants did not show any differential performance by content topic or work of teaching science instructional tool categories. Implications for progressing the field's understanding of the nature of CKT and approaches to developing summative instruments to assess science teachers' CKT are discussed. more »« less
Hanuscin, Deborah; Borda, Emily; Melton, Josie; Mikeska, Jamie N
(, International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education)
Wu, Hsin-Kai
(Ed.)
Research on teacher educators’ professional learning has gained increasing interest within science education. Curriculum materials have been suggested as a means of supporting teacher learning for several decades but have not yet been examined as a potential tool for supporting the learning of teacher educators. In this paper, we conceptualize a set of design heuristics to guide the development of educative curriculum materials for teacher educators. We illustrate how these heuristics guided the identification of specific educative features, which we included when developing prototype educative curriculum materials for elementary science teacher educators in content and/or method courses to support the development of preservice teachers’ content knowledge for teaching about matter and its interactions.
Gutiérrez, J.F.; Barth-Cohen, L.A.; Francom, R.; Greenberg, K.; MacArthur, K.; & Dobie, T.
(, Proceedings of the 41st annual meeting of the North-American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)
A major challenge for elementary STEM teacher educators is incorporating social justice considerations across the span of professional program coursework. Recognizing that standards and policy documents are pressing for diversity and inclusion in STEM education, there is a growing need to support preservice teachers’ learning about critical theories and how to develop an equitable vision of teaching. This paper describes ongoing research on our University’s elementary STEM teacher education program. We focus our discussion on instrument development and the methods we used for eliciting preservice teachers’ understandings of equity and diversity issues related to teaching STEM content. We designed a number of math, science, and technology scenarios in tandem, as means of building coherence across disciplinary boundaries; this report focuses on math teaching and learning.
Abstract Despite the importance of developing elementary science teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT), there are limited assessments that have been designed to measure the full breadth of their CKT at scale. Our overall research project addressed this gap by developing an online assessment to measure elementary preservice teachers' CKT about matter and its interactions. This study, which was part of our larger project, reports on findings from one component of the item development process examining the construct validity of 118 different CKT about matter assessment items. In this study, 86 elementary teachers participated in cognitive interviews to examine: (a) the knowledge and reasoning they used when responding to these CKT about matter assessment items and (b) the nature of the content challenges and the content teaching challenges they encountered. Findings showed that over 80% of participant interview responses indicated that the CKT about matter items functioned as hypothesized, providing evidence to support future use of these items on a large‐scale assessment and in studies of science teachers' CKT. When responding to the items, participants showed evidence of four main challenges with the science content: (a) using scientific concepts to reason about science tasks, (b) using adequate evidence to reason about science phenomenon, (c) drawing upon examples of scientific phenomena, and (d) drawing upon science vocabulary. Findings also showed that participants experienced challenges regarding the following content teaching aspects when responding to these items: (a) connecting to key scientific concepts involved in the work of teaching science, (b) attending to instructional goal(s), and (c) recognizing features of grade‐level appropriateness. Implications for using CKT items as part of large‐scale science assessment systems and identifying areas to target in elementary science teachers' CKT development are addressed.
Ni, Lijun; McKlin, Tom; Hao, Han; Baskin, Jake; Bohrer, Jason; Tian, Yan
(, ICER 2021: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research)
null
(Ed.)
Motivation: Recent efforts to expand K-12 computer science education highlight the great need for well-prepared computer science (CS) teachers. Teacher identity theory offers a particular conceptual lens for us to understand computer science teacher preparation and professional development. The emerging literature suggests that teacher identity is central to sustaining motivation, efficacy, job satisfaction, and commitment, and these attributes are crucial in determining teacher retention. While the benefits associated with a strong sense of teacher identity are great, teachers face unique challenges and tensions in developing their professional identity for teaching computer science. Objectives: This exploratory study attempts to operationalize computer science teacher identity through discussing the potential domains, proposing and testing a quantitative instrument for assessing computer science teachers’ professional identity. Method: We first discussed the potential domains of computer science teacher identity based on recent teacher identity literature and considerations on some unique challenges for computer science teachers. Then we proposed the computer science teacher identity scale, which was piloted through a national K-12 computer science teacher survey with 3,540 completed responses. The survey results were analyzed with a series of factor analyses to test the internal structure of the computer science teacher identity scale. Results: Our analyses reveal a four-factor solution for the computer science teacher identity scale, which is composed of CS teaching commitment, CS pedagogical confidence, confidence to engage students, and sense of community/belonging. There were significant differences among the teachers with different computer science teaching experiences. In general, teachers with more computer science teaching experience had higher computer science teacher identity scores on all four factors. Discussion: The four-factor model along with a large national dataset invites a deeper analysis of the data and can provide important benchmarks. Such an instrument can be used to explore developmental patterns in computer science teacher identity, and function as a pedagogical tool to provoke discussion and reflection among teachers about their professional development. This study may also contribute to understanding computer science teachers’ professional development needs and inform efforts to prepare, develop, and retain computer science teachers.
This study investigated the influence of immersive classroom simulation activities on the development of elementary pre-service teachers in two separate mathematics and science education courses that simultaneously focus on pedagogy and content. Participants submitted written personal reflections about their teaching experiences using the immersive classroom simulation activities. These reflections were analyzed for common emergent themes within and across courses. The participants discussed the benefits of the immersive classroom simulation activities in their written personal reflections. They viewed the experience as helpful in developing their skills as a practicing teacher in mathematics and science. Specifically, participants identified three sub-themes including: (a) the immersive classroom simulation activities as being beneficial by providing more authentic real-life teaching experiences than those experienced during peer-group teaching activities; (b) the importance of holding complete and appropriate understandings of content when teaching mathematics and science; and (c) the role of deep content knowledge in the process of developing high quality questions for students. This study has shown immersive classroom simulation activities to be a viable alternative for teacher education programs to engage elementary pre- service teachers in developing skills regarding classroom mathematics and science discourse.
Castellano, Katherine_E, and Mikeska, Jamie_N. Developing and using a scalable assessment to measure preservice elementary teachers' content knowledge for teaching about matter. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 61.6 Web. doi:10.1002/tea.21894.
Castellano, Katherine_E, & Mikeska, Jamie_N. Developing and using a scalable assessment to measure preservice elementary teachers' content knowledge for teaching about matter. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 61 (6). https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21894
Castellano, Katherine_E, and Mikeska, Jamie_N.
"Developing and using a scalable assessment to measure preservice elementary teachers' content knowledge for teaching about matter". Journal of Research in Science Teaching 61 (6). Country unknown/Code not available: Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons). https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21894.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10462176.
@article{osti_10462176,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Developing and using a scalable assessment to measure preservice elementary teachers' content knowledge for teaching about matter},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10462176},
DOI = {10.1002/tea.21894},
abstractNote = {Abstract There is strong agreement in science teacher education of the importance of teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT), which includes their subject matter knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge. However, there are limited instruments that can be easily administered and scored on a large scale to assess and study elementary science teachers' CKT. Such measures would support strategic monitoring of large groups of science teachers' CKT and the investigation of comparative questions about science teachers' CKT longitudinally across the professional continuum or across teacher education or professional development sites. To address this gap, this study focused on designing an automatically scorable summative assessment that can be used to measure preservice elementary teachers' (PSETs') CKT in one high‐leverage science content area: matter and its interactions. We conducted a field test of this CKT instrument with 822 PSETs from across the United States and used the response data to examine how this instrument functions as a potential tool for measuring PSETs' CKT in this science content area. Results suggest this instrument is reliable and can be used on large scale to support valid inferences about PSETs' CKT in this content area. In addition, the dimensionality analysis showed that all items measure a single construct of CKT about matter and its interactions, as participants did not show any differential performance by content topic or work of teaching science instructional tool categories. Implications for progressing the field's understanding of the nature of CKT and approaches to developing summative instruments to assess science teachers' CKT are discussed.},
journal = {Journal of Research in Science Teaching},
volume = {61},
number = {6},
publisher = {Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)},
author = {Castellano, Katherine_E and Mikeska, Jamie_N},
}
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