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Our work in progress draws from an ongoing investigation of the needs of elementary teachers in small, rural school districts. Due to geographic location, rural schools often struggle to provide content-specific professional learning (PL). Smaller networks of science in these settings may also be barriers. We are exploring how targeted instructional supports that take rural teachers’ contexts into consideration can be sustained through the implementation of cost-effective modest supports. Our research examines the immediate impacts of PL, sustainability of PL outcomes when coupled with modest supports, specific impacts on engineering instruction, and student learning impacts. The intervention started with an online PL to introduce teachers to the NGSS and provide them with a foothold for three-dimensional teaching. This PL was designed for rural teachers using online platforms and resources. The program’s conceptual framework leverages a suite of modest supports previously identified to sustain PL outcomes. These supports are designed to scaffold teachers’ professional growth, provide steady encouragement, and foster community. Approximately 160 teachers across four states were recruited to participate in a 1-year online program, which started with a 5-day PL focused on NGSS-aligned science and engineering instruction. Some modest supports that have since followed, such as professional learning community (PLC) sessions and dedicated electronic supports (e.g., Google Site, shared resources, etc.). These sessions have been tailored to support teachers in these rural settings. Since the project began, we have collected responses from participating teachers about supports they believe would aid their understanding of science and engineering instructional strategies. We are continuing to collect data as teachers are planning science and engineering learning experiences for their classrooms. Our presentation will share details about teachers’ needs and rural contexts, and findings about the immediate impacts of the intervention.
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This content will become publicly available on January 18, 2026
Delivering Formative Assessment and Reflecting on Student Learning as Components of Elementary Teacher Professional Learning
Teachers in small communities may be geographically isolated and have smaller collegial networks. Consequently, teachers in these settings may have limited exposure to contemporary strategies for engaging learners in science and engineering as suggested in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Thus, we provided a 5-day online PL experience and a year-long of modest supports (e.g., online professional learning community) to over 150 rural teachers from four states (CA, MT, ND, WY) to bridge the access gap and to enhance their instructional capabilities in teaching NGSS-aligned science and engineering lessons. Considering that the quality of the questions posed in a formative assessment impacts the quality of student thinking and what it reveals, we provided a formative assessment task, “Planning a Park” developed by Stanford NGSS Assessment Project (SNAP) and SCALE Science at WestEd, to participating teachers to implement in their classrooms. Teachers received online professional learning opportunities about the task before and after administering it in their classrooms. To understand their experiences with the task, we collected multiple data sources for triangulation, such as surveys about teachers’ preparedness to implement science lessons, teachers’ self-reported observations while delivering the task, their reflections about students’ performance, examples of student responses to the task, and interview responses from a sub-sample of teachers. As an initial analysis, we employed a descriptive coding process to capture teachers’ diverse experiences with the SCALE task (Saldaña, 2021). In this session, we will report rural teachers’ experiences with the formative assessment task that was provided as part of a year of modest supports. We believe this study will support the science education community, especially individuals preparing teachers to teach science and researchers on assessment, by sharing the benefits of implementing a formative assessment task during inservice teachers’ professional learning.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2201249
- PAR ID:
- 10596270
- Publisher / Repository:
- Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE)
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Long Beach, CA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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