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This design-based research study describes the instructional design process, benefits, and lessons learned in providing District Science Coordinators (DSCs) with differentiated professional development. Two cohorts of DSCs participated in a two-year professional development (PD) program (12 in Cohort 1 and 11 in Cohort 2) that met synchronously once per month and assigned asynchronous modules to DSCs based on a pre-assessment performance. DSCs provided feedback for each module and the entire program through surveys and interviews. DSCs’ engagement in the program was also tracked through the differentiated modules. DSCs’ responses indicated that the PD program provided them with a community of practice and the knowledge, skills, and confidence to advocate for science education. Lessons learned throughout the process included that DSCs needed intermediate deadlines, modules needed to be divided into smaller topics, and more consistent feedback should be provided throughout the implementation. This study provides practical suggestions for designing differentiated PD programs for educators and offers a possible format to help create communities of practice for educators. 

Supporting changes in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction requires an understanding of the relationship between STEM instructors' conceptions and practices. In this study, the authors used the Teacher‐Centered Systematic Reform (TCSR) model as a framework to understand how instructors' conceptions are related to their instructional practices. This multiple methods study included interviews and classroom observations of 22 STEM instructors. We used qualitative methods to describe instructors' conceptions of how students learn and quantitative methods, including a hierarchical cluster analysis, to analyze the types of relationships that exist between their conceptions and practices. Results indicated instructors had a wide range of conceptions that exist along a continuum from teacher‐centered to student‐centered. While many faculty members perceived student‐centered practices as valuable, they conceptualized these practices in different ways. Instructors implemented a wide range of instructional practices, and these practices varied independently of conceptions. We identified three distinct clusters of participants based on the relationships between instructors' conceptions and practices: congruent lecturers, congruent active learning facilitators, and incongruent lecturers. In the first two clusters, instructors' conceptions were aligned with their instructional practices. However, incongruent lecturers thought that students learn through active learning approaches but primarily lectured in their courses. Instructors in this group described several personal and contextual factors that influenced the relationship between their conceptions and practices. The results include an in‐depth portrayal of one participant in each cluster. We found that student‐centered conceptions may be necessary but are not sufficient for instructors to implement active learning. Implications focus on instructional and institutional change efforts. To promote instructional change most effectively, it is important to address each component of the TCSR model, including personal and contextual factors. A focus on conceptions and practices alone may not sufficiently support faculty members in overcoming barriers that limit active learning instruction.

 

Despite agreement among teacher educators, scholars, and policymakers on the importance of teachers’ subject matter knowledge (SMK), existing models provide limited information about the nature of this foundational component of teacher knowledge. The common assumption is that teachers need to know more about the science subject matter than their students are expected to learn, but what and how much more is underspecified. In order to more characterize science teachers’ SMK, we present the science knowledge for teaching (SKT) model, which has been adapted from the mathematics education literature to apply to science education. The SKT model includes three domains: core content knowledge, specialized content knowledge, and linked content knowledge. We used this model to explore the SMK new secondary chemistry teachers in South Africa and the United States drew on when they explained the conservation of mass and analyzed a related teaching scenario, two important tasks of teaching. Findings indicated these new teachers drew on knowledge from all three SKT domains in order to engage in these tasks of teaching. This result suggests the potential of the SKT model to characterize the nature of science teachers’ SMK and thereby better inform teacher preparation and professional development programs.

 

Although new teachers clearly need resources and support, little is known about the types of resources new science teachers' access during their early years of teaching. To increase knowledge of their needs, the study described in this article focused on the primary resources (i.e., human, material, and social) and secondary resources (i.e., strategic and symbolic) new science teachers' access and how those resources interact in new teachers' instructional contexts. The participants for this qualitative study were 15 new secondary science teachers in the United States, and data sources included a contextual interview, teaching observations, and a follow‐up interview. Findings revealed that these teachers had a variety of resources available to them, of which social resources were particularly important. Some resources were not accessed and remained latent resources. In addition, some interactions of resources in the new teachers' context led to the development of the network of resources model to represent how resources can interact in contexts to support a new teacher. This model highlights the importance of considering the interaction of multiple resources in a teaching context.