Collaborative Curriculum Design as a Framework for Designing Teacher Professional Development that Produces the Content Knowledge for Teaching the Life Sciences
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: sciences where content evolves rapidly. How subject matter knowledge related to teaching (SCK) is most effec-tively incorporated into PD has not been investigated. We studied how a professional learning community of high school teachers and scientists co-designing a bioscience curriculum produced the accompanying SCK-focused PD. SCK was level-specific but teachers could not generate it alone. Co-designing SCK with scientists was valuable to teachers, as evidenced by significant increases in their cognitive and attitudinal attributes to-ward the PD, in turn promoting change in practice and student learning gains, both within and outside the ini-tial partnership. Surprisingly, social network analysis of how the collaborators interacted revealed that though the network was cognitively and effectively robust, it was behaviorally much sparser than anticipated for such a high functioning partnership, counter to commonly accepted PD best practices. We suggest that the scien-tist/educator facilitators who intentionally promoted collaboration in the context of distributed leadership were able to eliminate extraneous interactions, optimizing the process. The results are further evidence that develop-ing content-focused PD relevant to 21st century life sciences requires dismantling the institutionalized segrega-tion between practitioners of science and teaching.
Source: The Journal of STEM Outreach
Institution: Tufts University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2790263378