Adapting the Next Generation Physical Science and Everyday Thinking curriculum for a lecture-laboratory format (Adapting Next Gen PET)

West Virginia University Research Corporation, Morgantown WV

Investigators

Abstract

This Exploration and Design for Engaged Student Learning project seeks to address two persistent problems in undergraduate education: the challenge of effective teaching resulting in useful learning in large lecture formats and the challenge of developing scientific understanding of physics principles by pre-service elementary teacher candidates. Adapting Next Gen PET strives to improve physics learning for future teachers while empowering faculty to implement education research in their physics courses by providing a well-tested and refined version of the curriculum that fits the most widely used general education science class model (lecture and lab) and can make full use of the rich supporting faculty resources developed for Physics and Everyday Thinking and Learning Physical Science. The Next Generation Physical Science and Everyday Thinking (Next Gen PET) grew from Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET), which has been shown to significantly affect both future teacher content knowledge and understanding of how students learn science. It has been taught at two-year and four-year institutions, adapted for science methods courses, and offered as a workshop for practicing elementary teachers. And yet, it does not fit the common lecture/lab format that fulfills general education requirements at most colleges. This project will develop an implementation outline of existing materials to support the lecture/lab model and add the one science practice which is currently unsupported: Planning and Carrying Out Investigations. Upon completion, a national workshop will be advertised to the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) institutions and to all physics departments in the U.S. This project will not only provide a course appropriate for adoption by PhysTEC institutions, but also one that could serve as a general education natural science lab course for a broad range of non-STEM majors. Outcomes of this project will be the development of undergraduate students with an increased understanding of how scientists discover and build knowledge, learn science themselves, and learn how to better teach science to others (for example, elementary school students). The materials would be designed to support faculty in implementing research-based instructional practices, which could catalyze faculty transition to using these effective methods more broadly. The Adapting Next Gen PET project builds upon prior work and will: develop instructional activities and an investigation practice assessment instrument; infuse the materials into a current course and validate the new assessment instrument with pre-service elementary teacher candidates; and enter into a reiterative process of revision and implementation based on the student and faculty instructor feedback and project evaluation. This project will carefully map and test an implementation schedule that utilizes existing materials with additional activities focusing on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) practices least well covered by the current curricula, particularly Planning and Carrying Out Investigations. The careful mapping to maximize coherent story lines will also identify where in the course the best opportunities for enhancing experimental design may exist. Several large-class-setting lessons, as well as a complementary laboratory component, will be added. Testing will ensure that no loss of learning or attitude improvement compared to the existing materials result from the new structure. Additionally, the assessment process will lead to more appropriate instruments for measuring students' knowledge of the Planning and Carrying Out Investigations practice, which is critically important to pre-service teachers' pedagogical disciplinary knowledge. The knowledge and skills pre-service teachers learn and practice in the course will help them become effective teachers of science. Designed from both the constructivist and social-cultural theoretical perspectives and built on a conceptual change framework, this project has the potential to influence future elementary teachers, as well as future high school teachers assisting in the course, and it will afford the opportunity to introduce more faculty to research-based curricula and pedagogy. As the course supports will not be too far removed from traditional instruction and will not require that faculty rewrite curriculum, faculty will have the opportunity to explore and practice using interactive pedagogy that allows for student construction of ideas, possibly supporting faculty transition to and advocacy for research-based instructional practices.