Our PhysTEC
Project: Collaborating with a Resident Teacher to Improve an Elementary Science
Field Experience
Cody Sandifer, Towson
University
Laura Lising, Towson University
Lisa Tirocchi, Johnnycake Elementary
Abstract
During
2004-2005, Towson University’s Physics Teacher Education Coalition
(PhysTEC) project focused on improving our “Teaching Science in the Elementary
School” field experience course in two ways:
(1) by making the different sections of the course more uniformly
aligned with the course goals, and (2) by increasing the amount and quality of
inquiry in the undergraduate interns’ science lessons. To help improve the course, the project team
-- which included a full-time teacher-in-residence -- created and implemented
workshops for the elementary site mentor teachers, and also arranged for a
meeting between the different course instructors. End-of-semester surveys and observations of
the interns’ science lessons revealed that the project was successful at
improving the field experience course.
Included in this report are project goals and activities, the role of
the teacher-in-residence, and a list of factors that may challenge the
project’s ultimate sustainability.
Background and Context
The Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC)
project is a nationwide project sponsored by the American Physical Society, the
American Institute of Physics, and the American Association of Physics Teachers
that has the goal of improving science preparation for K-12 teachers. At each
of the PhysTEC sites around the United States, science faculty, education
faculty, and a full-time teacher-in-residence (TIR)
work together to implement local teaching reforms that emphasize interactive
engagement and a student-centered approach to learning science. At Towson,
the PhysTEC project team consists of Dr. Cody Sandifer and Dr. Laura Lising,
two full-time science education faculty in the Department of Physics,
Astronomy, and Geosciences, and a full-time elementary TIR. The 2004-2005 TIR
was Ms. Lisa Tirocchi, a Baltimore County
elementary teacher.
Towson University
Towson University, a member of the University System of Maryland, is
the second largest university in the state.
Towson graduates more preservice elementary teachers than
any other Maryland school:
approximately 200 per year. As a
result, the education faculty at Towson -- the majority of which reside in content
departments rather than education departments -- focus primarily on
elementary-level science teaching.
Science in Towson’s Elementary Education Program
Before being officially
admitted into the elementary education program, pre-elementary undergraduates
at Towson are required to take an introductory
physical science course, Physical Science I (PHSC 101). In this course, students learn basic concepts
of physical science through guided inquiry.
Immediately before the
student teaching semesters, elementary education majors at Towson are required to
complete a "math and science” semester, which is a semester solely
dedicated to content and methods related to math/science instruction. The Department of Physics, Astronomy, and
Geosciences offers two courses during this math/science semester: Earth-Space
Science (PHSC 303), which is an inquiry-focused content/methods course, and
Teaching Science in the Elementary School (SCIE 376), which is the elementary
science field experience. Student
cohorts are enrolled in these two courses concurrently.
SCIE 376: Teaching
Science in the Elementary School
The field experience course (SCIE 376), which is the central
focus of our PhysTEC project, is perhaps the most important science course in Towson’s
elementary education program. Recent
surveys have shown that approximately 25% of Towson’s
elementary student teachers do not teach any science during their student
teaching semesters, and that only 35-40% of Towson’s
elementary student teachers teach science frequently. This means that SCIE 376 may be the last real
opportunity for many elementary education majors to improve their science teaching
skills and their understanding of educational theory in an authentic classroom
setting.
In terms of general course structure, there are 6-7 sections
of SCIE 376 offered each semester; each section meets once per week for four hours at a
nearby elementary school. The course is structured to help preservice elementary
teachers (whom we refer to as “interns”) learn and practice
methods of science teaching and engage in self-reflection and improvement. Course activities
include an hour of teaching time with the elementary children, coaching from
the classroom mentor teacher, lesson planning under the supervision of the
course instructor, and methods/content discussions and activities.
The
Need for Course Improvement
Towson’s elementary education program is meant to provide a
coherent experience for the many preservice teachers who enroll in our science
courses every year. While this coherence
had been partly achieved by the focus on inquiry in both PHSC 101 and PHSC 303,
it was not clear at the project’s start whether SCIE 376 was also in alignment
with the program’s overarching focus on inquiry-based science teaching. A critical issue was that, at the beginning
of the project, it was unclear as to whether the interns’ science lessons in
the elementary schools were inquiry-based, or were instead more traditional
types of science lessons.
Beyond issues of programmatic coherence, there was
also the issue that instructor and student complaints about SCIE 376 had been
steadily increasing in the semesters prior to the grant. Follow-up discussions with instructors and
interns revealed that the different sections of the course were no longer
uniform (in terms the number of science lessons taught per intern, the number
of interns per classroom, and feedback on the interns’ science teaching), and
also that there was a general lack of communication about the goals, structure,
and logistics of the course. For
example, in some sections of the course, there were 4-6 preservice interns per
elementary classroom, with each intern in charge of teaching science to her own
small group of elementary students; the teaching structure in these sections
guaranteed that each intern taught every week, which was the desired
outcome. In other sections, interns from
a classroom group would take turns teaching science to the entire class, which
meant that these interns would teach only 3 or 4 times per semester.
Faced with an array of different problems, the primary focus of Towson’s PhysTEC project became clear: to improve the elementary field experience
course. In this case, "course
improvement" was to be measured by the degree to which the different
sections of the course became more uniformly aligned with course goals, and
also by the extent to which the undergraduate interns increased the amount and
quality of inquiry in their elementary science lessons at the field experience
school sites.
The Role of the
Teacher-in-Residence
Teacher-in-residence (TIR) Lisa Tirocchi was
responsible for key project activities at Towson: she made weekly visits to
field experience sites, served as liaison for the sites and the PhysTEC team,
and also served as a resource for the SCIE 376 course instructors, interns, and
mentors teachers. In addition, Ms. Tirocchi
participated in many other project activities, all of which were collaborative
efforts between Ms. Tirocchi and the science education faculty members; these
activities included weekly project meetings, planning and implementing
instructor and mentor teacher workshops, developing and administering surveys
and teaching observation protocols, data collation and analysis, recruiting and
retaining field experience sites, and planning and organizing a curriculum
resource folder for the field experience course instructors. In each area of grant activity, Ms. Tirocchi
was able to draw on her general teaching expertise, her practical classroom
experience, her understanding of inquiry-based science instruction, and her
knowledge of the Baltimore County school system to guide and
inform the project’s efforts.
Project Activity: Course Improvement
After becoming aware of the problems associated with
SCIE 376, the project team engaged in a number of activities to improve the
many different sections of the course, including the re-establishment of clear
course goals (Summer 2004), the teaching
of certain course sections by the project faculty (Fall 2004, Spring 2005),
mentor teacher workshops (August 2004, December 2004), and a course instructor
meeting (December 2004). The project
team chose to spend a significant amount of effort on workshops and meetings
due to the fact that Towson University offers as many as 7 sections of SCIE 376
offered each semester – many of which are taught by part-time instructors;
consequently, any reforms related to SCIE 376 involve strong coordination
between the multiple course sections, and new training for part-time
instructors and mentor teachers.
Our Definition of Inquiry
The focus of the science component of Towson’s elementary education program is the
notion of inquiry -- the idea that
students should learn science by engaging in the process of science
themselves. To further clarify what is
meant by inquiry-based science instruction, our PhysTEC team adopted the
approach taken by the National Science Education Standards (1996), which
defines inquiry learning and teaching through a series of “emphasis” summaries
that contrast inquiry-based teaching with more traditional teaching
methods. Samples from the NSES Science
Teaching and Science Content emphasis summaries (see pp. 52 and 113) are shown
in Table 1
Table 1
Emphases in Inquiry-Based Science
Instruction, as Defined by the NSES
|
Less
Emphasis Should be Placed on:
|
More
Emphasis Should be Placed on:
|
|
Verifying science content
|
Investigating and analyze science content
|
|
Getting an answer
|
Using evidence to develop or revise an
explanation
|
|
Providing answers to questions
|
Communicating science explanations
|
|
Rigidly following curriculum
|
Selecting and adapting curriculum
|
|
Focusing on acquisition of information
|
Focusing on understanding and use of
scientific ideas and inquiry processes
|
|
Lecture, text, and demonstration
|
Guiding students in active and extensive
scientific inquiry
|
|
Asking for recitation of acquired knowledge
|
Providing opportunities for discussion and debate
|
Establishing SCIE 376 Course Goals
Having clarified our definition of
inquiry, our next task was to create an updated list of course goals and share
these goals with the SCIE 376 mentor teachers, university instructors, and
interns:
- Interns will understand and apply inquiry-focused
theories of science teaching and learning
- Interns will become exposed to local, state, and
national content and teaching standards
- Interns will observe their mentor teacher
infrequently (0-2 times)
- Interns will teach science as often as possible (9+
times for each intern)
- The interns’ science units/lessons will generally
consist of modified versions of the official school units/lessons, with
all modifications being driven by the course’s focus on inquiry
- Interns will receive in-depth feedback on their
teaching from their mentor teachers and university instructors
- Interns will engage in self-reflection on their
teaching and make steps toward improvement
These goals were used to
guide every aspect of the project’s efforts to improve SCIE 376.
Mentor Teacher Workshops
The goals of the mentor teacher workshops
were: to help the mentors develop a
better understanding of inquiry and the scientific process; to clarify for the
mentors the roles and responsibilities of the university instructors and mentor
teachers; and to hold open discussions about course goals, course logistics,
providing post-teaching feedback, and other issues of concern. An important
point is that many of the workshop topics were introduced in direct response to
questions, concerns, and ideas that had been shared by the mentor
teachers. Sixteen mentor teachers
attended the summer workshop, and five teachers attended the winter workshop.
Specifically, the half-day mentor teacher
workshops included the following content/activities:
- An
overview of the elementary education program at Towson
- The
goals and structure of the course
- A sample of a semester-long course
timeline
- A description of the
roles/expectations of the university instructors and mentor teachers
- A demonstration
of a methods activity, in which mentor teachers participated in the
analysis and modification of different science lessons
- Open
discussions about the different aspects of the course
Workshop comments and a comparison of
pre/post workshop surveys indicated that the workshops were successful at
communicating the course goals, answering the mentor teachers’ questions, and
establishing contacts between Towson University and the local school systems.
Instructor Meeting
Specifically, the two-hour meeting
included the following content/activities:
- Our
reasons for updating the course goals, including the emphasis on inquiry
in the National Science Education Standards (1996) and the lack of inquiry
observed in the interns’ science lessons in Fall 2004
- An
overview of the course goals, with particular emphasis on the newly established inquiry goals,
and the goal of helping the interns modify curriculum to make it more
inquiry-based