Five Strategies to Support all Teachers: Suggestions to Get Off the Slippery Slope of Cookbook Science Teaching

Many teachers shudder at the thought of implementing an inquiry curriculum. Perhaps they envision a rowdy classroom with little learning. Maybe they wonder, How will this connect to all the standards? Fortunately, these legitimate concerns can be addressed, and all students can engage in thoughtfully constructed inquiry science experiences. In this article, we outline five strategies that we have used with elementary school teachers as they moved from a cookbook approach in science to an approach that is inquiry-based. Having presented these five strategies in a linear format, we know that on the surface this may seem close to the slippery slope of cookbook science teaching, but we also know that thoughtful practitioners working in classrooms across the country will see these strategies as interactive, overlapping, and nonsequential

Using Inquiry-Based Teaching and Kids Inquiry Conferences to Strengthen Elementary Science Instruction and to Encourage More Students to Pursue Science Careers

For the past 20 years, there has been a push to improve the teaching and learning of science in elementary schools. One strong reason for this was the release of the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996). The Standards articulated not only what K-12 students should know (science content standards), but also how science teachers needed to teach (teaching standards) and be continuously supported (professional development standards). The Standards also considered ways to support inquiry-based and meaningful science learning for K-12 students (program and system standards). According to the NRC, one ot:·the four reasons underpinning all of this is because the goals for science education within the school day are to educate students who could increase their economic productivity through the use of knowledge, understanding and skills of the scientifically literate person in their careers (1996, p. 13). Additional reasons for this push include greater attention to the STEM fields, evolving and expanding global networks, and an ever-increasing list of accountability mechanisms thrust upon schools and teachers (Marx and Harris 2006). Clearly, in order to pursue a career in a scientific field, children need knowledge and skills very different from those traditionally taught in elementary schools. Unfortunately, what occurs in elementary schools is the opposite of what the Standards advocate

Collaborating to improve inquiry-based teaching in elementary science and mathematics methods courses

This study examines the effect of promoting inquiry-based teaching (IBT) through collaboration between a science methods course and mathematics methods course in an elementary teacher education program. During the collaboration, preservice elementary teacher (PST) candidates experienced 3 different types of inquiry as a way to foster increased understanding of inquiry based teaching (IBT). The experiences included a PST driven science inquiry and a mathematics inquiry where PSTs were learners and a science inquiry where PSTs were teachers. During and following the semester of the collaboration, data were collected to assess the impact of the inquiry experiences on the PSTs’ understanding of IBT. Student work and teacher field notes suggest that PSTs were able to identify, confront and wrestle with the complexities of IBT

Have a Kids Inquiry Conference: Putting a Twist on the Typical Science Fair

In school, the traditional format for the formal sharing of science experiences has been the science fair. Although the format of science fairs may vary, the usual components consist of a step-by-step experimental process that students follow as they test different variables, construct a hypothesis, and collect data to support or disprove their hypothesis. Usually the science fair is conducted as a competitive event at which prizes are awarded for the best examples. Unfortunately, this type of science event has little connection to the real sharing that scientists do regularly. The National Science Education Standards (NSES) call for an approach to science that honors the scientific processes in which scientists actually engage (NRC 1996). A careful look shows that practicing scientists share informal talk daily and deliberately prepare for more formal sharing of their work through participation in professional conferences. Unlike the school science fair, the professional science conference is a noncompetitive place where scientists interact and share ideas. Work that is in process is often presented, and the giving and receiving of feedback is an integral part of the conference. One alternative to the traditional school science fair is a Kids Inquiry Conference (KIC; Saul et al. 2005). More along the lines of the professional science conference, a KIC encourages students to develop their own inquiry projects, carry them out using an inquiry-based model, and prepare for a public sharing event. In addition, preparing for and participating in a KIC can be a powerful professional development (PD) experience for teachers. In this article, we describe preparing for, implementing, and reflecting on the KIC that we--university faculty collaborating with elementary teachers--organized with 250 students and 12 teachers from two elementary schools. We\u27ll focus on the conference logistics--you bring the inquiry

Whiteness as a Barrier to Becoming a Culturally Relevant Teacher: Clinical Experiences and the Role of Supervision

Clinical experiences are crucial to the development of prospective teachers (PTs), especially the student teaching practicum. While the dynamics of schools are beginning to change in response to documented inequities for students, particularly students of color, the student teaching practicum remains largely unchanged and unchallenged with regard to addressing racism, oppression and white dominance. In this study, we explore PTs’ experiences and discourse in the context of student teaching in urban schools and the corresponding supervision of student teachers. Specifically, we examine the ways in which whiteness and racism obstruct the development of culturally relevant teachers. The data illuminate key insights into the ways in which PTs maneuver to avoid critical self-interrogation in relation to racism and inequities in schools. We conclude that clinical supervision experiences are opportunities to hide behind and/or challenge whiteness, and that the role of the supervisor is critical in facilitating the exposure to, and enactment of, culturally relevant pedagogy

Understanding Community Voices as a Force in Teacher Education

Ryan Flessner and Paula Magee\u27s contribution to Flessner, R., Miller, G. R., Patrizio, K. M., & Horwitz, J. R. (Eds.). (2012). Agency through teacher education: Reflection, community, and learning. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education

Investigating Weather, Climate, and Climate Change Understanding of Appalachian Middle-Level Students

Climate change is an increasingly pervasive global topic, but how much of this discussion is accurately understood by students? Fully comprehending the small fluctuations associated with long term changes in temperature and precipitation is a daunting task for the general public, let alone for middle-level adolescents. This study examines students’ understanding of weather, climate and climate change. Forty-seven students, ages 12-14 from the Appalachian region of the US, were surveyed before, immediately after, and six months after a standards-based unit of instruction. The study utilized a questionnaire developed by Boon (2009) with additional questions related to weather and climate. Qualitative data were analyzed using a constructivist framework and student responses were examined for understanding of the main content ideas. The students’ understandings were analyzed over time for shifts and were also compared with previously published research (Bodzin et al., 2014; Boon, 2009). Students made improvements in some aspects of understanding with instruction but not all gains persisted to six months post instruction. Students’ distinctions between weather and climate were altered by instruction, persisted, and continued to improve with time. Students demonstrated a general understanding of the differences between weather and climate but struggled when asked to apply this knowledge to specific situations. Some improvements in students’ basic understanding of the greenhouse effect were evident, but some of these improvements degraded with time. While instruction was able to temporarily improve understanding of greenhouse gases, and the benefits of the greenhouse effect, overall students did not retain this understanding over the long term

The Affordances and Challenges of Enacting Culturally Relevant STEM Pedagogy

In this chapter, the current literature base involving the use of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) in elementary STEM classroom settings is reviewed. The review reveals three main categories of how CRP is used in classrooms. These categories are: student engagement and outcomes (SEO), instructional practices and dispositions (IPD), and curricular materials (CM). In the chapter, each of these categories is explained and practical examples are described. Finally, reflections on why some components of CRP, as revealed from the literature review, are enacted more or less frequently are discussed

Presentation and Outcomes of Infants With Idiopathic Cholestasis: A Multicenter Prospective Study

Objectives: The aim of the study was to determine the frequency and natural history of infantile idiopathic cholestasis (IC) in a large, prospective, multicenter cohort of infants. Methods: We studied 94 cholestatic infants enrolled up to 6 months of age in the NIDDK ChiLDReN (Childhood Liver Disease Research Network) "PROBE" protocol with a final diagnosis of IC; they were followed up to 30 months of age. Results: Male sex (66/94; 70%), preterm birth (22/90 with data; 24% born at 1 mg/dL and/or ALT > 35 U/L; n = 7), and exited healthy (resolved disease per study site report but without documented biochemical resolution; n = 34). Biochemical resolution occurred at median of 9 months of age. GGT was <100 U/L at baseline in 34 of 83 participants (41%). Conclusions: Frequency of IC and of death or liver transplant was less common in this cohort than in previously published cohorts, likely because of recent discovery and diagnosis of genetic etiologies of severe/persistent cholestasis that previously were labeled as idiopathic. Preterm birth and other factors associated with increased vulnerability in neonates are relatively frequent and may contribute to IC. Overall outcome in IC is excellent. Low/normal GGT was common, possibly indicating a role for variants in genes associated with low-GGT cholestasis-this warrants further study

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care