By: Meenakshi Sharma, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Mercer University
Mercer University’s College of Education offers endorsement programs for in-service teachers including a STEM endorsement program consisting of three courses. Program standards are aligned with the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, and the learning opportunities designed to help meet these standards are significant. We can work with a range of in-service teachers from rural, urban, and suburban K-12 schools across Georgia because the STEM program is conducted 100% online and includes synchronous components to meet students each week. The program offers a great opportunity for us to hear teacher voices, learn about their school systems, respond to their needs, and prepare them to better serve Georgia’s students.
When I started teaching this program it was new; however, we’ve had the opportunity to design learning opportunities and make changes over the years through learning from each cohort. The program’s core mission is to prepare teachers to understand, integrate, and enact science and engineering practices (SEPs) as outlined in the National Research Council framework (NRC, 2012). A second focus is to enhance teachers’ understanding and ability to use SEPs in their classrooms, alongside instructional tools and strategies that support sensemaking for equitable STEM learning environments. Sensemaking is a dynamic process of building or revising an explanation to ascertain the mechanism underlying a phenomenon in order to resolve a gap or inconsistency in one’s understanding (Odden & Russ, 2019).
In this blog post, I share some of the key learning opportunities and associated tools of the Mercer STEM endorsement program, outlining how it engages K-12 teachers in stimulating discussions and helps them build a repertoire of knowledge and practices to use in their classrooms and districts. These ideas are a work in progress and are constantly adapted to improve and enhance their effectiveness.
Approach 1: Enhancing Teacher Practice through the PERF Cycle and Video Analysis
The Planning-Enacting-Reflecting-Feedback (PERF) instructional cycle and video analysis is a structured approach I use to provide teachers with opportunities to: (1) plan lessons or mini-units integrating a set of focused SEPs, (2) practice teaching them, (3) reflect on their teaching, and (4) receive critical feedback to improve their practice (see Figure 1). As a teacher educator, I was particularly inspired by the latest NASEM report, “Science and Engineering in Preschool Through Elementary Grades: The Brilliance of Children and the Strengths of Educators” (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022), and its recommendations for teacher educators. Although I had been using the PERF cycle to engage teachers in the process of designing and enacting STEM lessons/units, the NASEM report prompted me to reconsider the cycle and provide teachers with opportunities to critically reflect on how they were positioning themselves and their students while planning and enacting phenomenon-based lessons focused on a set of SEPs.
Figure 1: PERF cycle for supporting teachers’ equitable STEM instruction
I utilize a video assessment tool to enhance teachers’ ability to “notice,” helping them recognize and understand how they use SEPs to cultivate a classroom environment and discourse that encourages active exploration of phenomena, promotes student agency, and positions students as active participants in scientific inquiry (NASEM, 2022). The concept of “teacher noticing,” introduced by Van Es and Sherin (2002) and further developed by other science education scholars (Kang & Anderson, 2015), highlights the critical role of teachers in observing, interpreting, and responding to classroom dynamics and student cognition. Teachers use predefined labels to identify and annotate instructional moments in their videos. For example, teachers are prompted to identify and describe instances where they observe evidence of student understanding, as well as moments where they support student sensemaking. These annotations serve as the rationale/evidence for why they choose a particular label and how it explains the moment. Their annotations accumulate as they reflect on their videos and provide context for discussing if and how their teaching strategies create sensemaking opportunities and engage students. These discussions help teachers center their actions in the classroom and consider how they position both their students and themselves as educators. Here are a few examples of teacher annotations, with the labels in parentheses that teachers used to identify and explain a teaching moment in their videos.
A student is adding a prediction to how shadows were being formed in the video. This shows me that this student understands the value of forming predictions about phenomena and how it can help in our STEM thinking. I am also modeling for students how to build on student dialogue. (Student understanding SEPs)
Students were able to explain their thinking and defend their plant’s adaptation. After obtaining new information, students worked on their plants again to make any additions they felt would be helpful for survival.” (Student understanding SEPs)
Some of my students had an idea about what was going on, but they could not express what was happening until I introduced the words “attraction” and “magnetic pull.” (Student asking questions)
In these annotations, a pattern of teacher noticing emerges–they actively observe and interpret student actions and statements to assess their understanding of SEPs. The teacher focuses on student abilities to make predictions, adjust their thinking based on new information, ask questions for better understanding, and explain their reasoning. Additionally, the teacher highlights instances where students engage in dialogue, indicating a deeper level of understanding and engagement with the material.
Approach 2: Book Clubs
Another important aspect of the endorsement program is book clubs, where teachers collaboratively read and reflect on significant frameworks that outline equitable instruction within STEM fields. This exploration of educational literature helps educators to deepen their understanding of equitable practices, fostering a shared knowledge base. Additionally, the program explicitly links themes from the books to other course content, promoting a comprehensive understanding and facilitating in-depth discussions on equitable STEM instruction. For the 2023 cohort, I selected three books (see below) because they aligned well with the STEM endorsement program themes and were free through Mercer University or the National Academies website.
Each week, we dedicated 45 minutes of class time to book club discussions using various formats: students responded to weekly discussion questions in breakout rooms, created presentations, and posted responses to the written discussion posts. Table 1 presents topics and questions for weekly discussions.
Table 1: Weekly discussion topics and questions
A variety of themes emerged during the discussions–representation, relevance, and equity–all revolving around key issues within STEM education, including but not limited to those related to equity. Teachers recognized and reflected on the impact of various factors and policies that affect their work in classrooms. They also stressed the significance of making science education relevant to students’ lives and backgrounds, highlighting the importance of community partnerships. Here are some teacher quotes from our book club discussions related to the themes above.
Representation
“…preschool and elementary are taught mainly by white women, differing from school demographics. This affects student growth—different cultures need different responses, and unrecognized bias impacts access to information.”
“This book reminded me why I teach science—engaging, culturally relevant, and meaningful teaching creates a fun, safe learning environment.”
Relevance
“The book was a breath of fresh air! It addresses teacher and student frustrations—students learn science through their cultural experiences and background knowledge.”
“Science learning environments should be developed through community-educator partnerships—insightful for building relationships with community members to provide student experiences.
Equity
“We alternate teaching science and social studies in 4-week increments—only 30 minutes a day for each subject.”
“Chapter 5—success through collaboration, like the Three Sisters System. Corn, beans, and squash support each other in a polyculture, promoting positive outcomes through diversity.”
Approach 3: Action Research to Develop a Vision of Equitable Instruction
The STEM endorsement program allows teachers to take a researcher’s perspective by conducting action research in their own classrooms, observing the effect of their instructional practices on creating an equitable classroom culture. To seamlessly align action research with instruction, teachers were introduced to a set of instructional tools (sticky notes, discussion stoplight). They chose one or two tools to explicitly incorporate into their units to observe their impact on student participation in STEM classrooms. They collected data on the application of this tool and then wrote an action research report based on the adapted template provided to them. I selected tools from the OpenSciEd curriculum and Ambitious Science Teaching for their accumulating research that shows their effectiveness.
Teachers collected and analyzed data in various formats to assess the impact of the tools they employed. The action research’s purpose was not to be overly rigorous but to enable teachers to share a common vision for equitable instruction supported by the tools used in their individual projects. Action research helped teachers see the benefits of these tools on student participation and their role in supporting students’ sensemaking.
Future Recommendations
Each approach in the STEM endorsement program highlighted in this blog exemplifies a learning opportunity that supports teachers in developing a vision and practice of equitable instruction. The examples show that when teachers engage in instructional practices using phenomena, utilize SEPs to plan and enact STEM lessons, and employ appropriate tools to support and reflect on their instruction, they become oriented toward thinking critically about classroom culture, student participation, and student ideas. Technology-supported video analysis helped teachers practice their noticing skills to attend to key aspects of student learning and support scientific sensemaking in their classrooms. Book discussions encouraged a scholarly approach, studying texts to reflect on trends and practices in STEM education. Similarly, tool-supported instruction encouraged teachers to take a reflective approach and use data to assess the effectiveness of an instructional tool. Collectively, these approaches influenced their understanding of crucial actions and orientation toward teaching STEM while being responsive to students.
The examples show teachers’ critical stance towards their work in the classroom—reflections that help them assess classroom culture, student agency, and participation in STEM learning. We advocate for the use of technology that allows teachers to be reflective and receive regular feedback on their teaching practices. Additionally, when teachers engage in action research, they should be encouraged to share their efforts and findings with their colleagues and the broader school community. This can help other stakeholders understand and see tangible examples of instructional tools and their role and effect in creating STEM learning environments that encourage student ideas and participation. We also recommend that teachers be given the time and space to read practitioner research and texts to inspire their teaching practices. These readings can help teachers understand broader discussions in the field, which can help close the theory-practice gap.
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Meenakshi Sharma, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Mercer University
sharma_m@mercer.edu
Meenakshi Sharma is an Assistant Professor of Science Education in Tift College of Education. Her work centers around science teacher education and students’ learning of science in K-12 classrooms. She specifically focuses on inquiry-oriented science teaching as aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards and STEM education.
