Rites Pd Study Intro - 2014-09-10

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Running head: Partnership-Centered Professional Development 1

A Model for Supporting Partnership-Centered Innovation and Professional

Development with a District-University Partnership

Jay Fogleman

Joshua Caulkins

Sarah Knowlton

Minsuk Shim

Stephen Brand

Laura Shifman

Daniel Murray


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Partnership-Centered Professional Development 2

Abstract

High quality curricular supports, including curriculum materials and professional

development (PD), are critical ingredients for improving science instruction in American

public schools. The implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

has warranted research on how these innovations can be implemented effectively and

efficiently. There is a need for models, strategies and supports that district-university

partnerships can use to capitalize on a partnerships expertise in science concepts,

practices, and instruction to develop materials that meet the needs of local teachers. In

this study, we describe a model that district-university partnerships might use to enhance

their initial capacity to develop and support innovations that meet the needs of their

teachers. We identify design principles for supporting collaborative Resource

Teams (RTs) of Gr5-12 and Higher Education scientists tasked with developing

standards-based investigations and PD short courses for teachers. The effects of how each

RT designed their PD on teacher learning was measured. Three hundred teachers content

knowledge gains, their self-reported confidence in using the partnerships investigations,

and the characteristics of the eleven individual short courses were analyzed using

Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). Results showed increased teacher learning and

efficacy when RTs utilized more research-based strategies in their short courses. Results

suggest that with comprehensive supports, district-university partnerships can enhance

their capacity to develop effective curricular innovations and PD. Such partnership-


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centered approaches have the potential to increase the usability of curricular innovations

as well as the the capacity of university-based partnerships to utilize their expertise to

improve science education within their communities.


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Introduction

The need to improve opportunities students have to learn science has long been

recognized by the science education community, and there has been a steady stream of efforts

over the past few decades to support science teachers by providing them with curriculum

materials and professional development (PD) that foster teaching and learning in ways that are

congruent with current understandings about how people learn {Bransford, "How People Learn:

Brain, Mind, Experience, and School", 2000}. The multifaceted approach of the Next

Generation Science Standards (NGSS){NGSS Lead States, "Next Generation Science Standards:

For States, By States", 2013}, where core disciplinary ideas, crosscutting themes, and science

and engineering practices play equal and interdependent roles in helping student understand the

ideas and processes of science, only makes the need for high quality supports for teachers more

acute.

A rich history of curricular reform has provided us a growing understanding of the

characteristics of effective classroom innovations. Teachers can require support through several

enactments to understand how to use an innovation effectively (CITE). Consequently,

innovations must be used in a school long enough for its teachers to understand how to use them

and integrate them into their practice. In the past, innovations have rarely persisted beyond their

initial implementation, in part because districts struggle to develop the capacity to provide

ongoing supports such as PD so that each years new teachers can learn to use the adopted

materials (CITE). This difficulty has lead several researchers to acknowledge that the

challenges of using, sustaining, and scaling innovations should be also be an area of innovation

and research (Cite Penuel and fishman).


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District-university partnerships have often been used to implement, support, and

research such curricular innovations. Within these symbiotic collaborations, districts and schools

often gain access to innovations and professional development developed by university

researchers while researchers can study how students use and learn from their innovations in real

classrooms {CITE: Fishman & Fogleman NARST). These partnerships have been studied

extensively (CITE), and have been recognized as a viable way to for districts to build their

instructional capacity in the short term (CITE). It has been difficult, however, to sustain

teachers use of innovative curriculum materials as a partnerships capacity to support the

innovation wanes {cite Fullan).

Though collaborative and symbiotic, district university partnerships struggle to be

collaborations where higher ed and K12 partners share the challenges of innovating and

facilitating innovations that meet their teachers needs. Traditionally within these partnerships,

higher education faculty and researchers, sometimes in collaboration with k-12 teachers, have

developed curricular interventions and provided the teachers with the necessary PD for their

initial implementation. Cobern (2003) recognized that in order to sustain an innovation within

such a collaboration, the ownership of the innovation must shift from the university innovators

and researchers to the district PD facilitators and teachers. Fogleman et al (2010) described

efforts to support district lead teachers planning PD when university partners could no long

provide this level of curricular support for curricular units conceptualized and developed chiefly

by university researchers. The challenge of shifting ownership and the relatively short funding

period of most curricular reform efforts suggests that there is a need for partnership models that

build in the ownership and understanding of the innovations by all partnersfrom the outset


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instead of setting up a need for shifting the ownership later. In this study, we describe such as

model based on collaborative Resource Teams comprised of both higher education and the

partnerships G5-12 schools.

In this study, we present a model for developing effective, PD in the context of a district-

university partnership that may address some of the issues related to sustainability. We begin by

describing what is already understood about the design of effective and sustainable PD and the

role of effective PD in helping teachers use innovative curriculum resources. After describing the

PD design process, we then present our approach for assessing the effectiveness of our PD and

investigating its critical factors. Finally, we discuss the strengths and weakness of our model, as

well as its significance in light of the innovations that will surely follow efforts to update

national science standards.

In this study, we argue that district university partnerships can increase their capacity for

supporting their teachers by including a diverse group of partners in their development and

support process and designing supports that enable these stakeholders utilize research-based

strategies to develop high quality curricular materials and PD that successfully supports

partnership teachers. We present a model for supporting partnership-centered Resource Teams

that are involved both in innovation development and PD, and present evidence that the model

results several capacity-building effects, including providing effective PD for participating

teachers as well as opportunities district lead teachers and university science faculty to

collaborate, learn, lead, and share their respective expertise with the partnership.

We begin by describing what is already understood about the design of effective and

sustainable PD and the role of effective PD in helping teachers use innovative curriculum


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resources. After describing the PD design process, we then present our approach for assessing the

effectiveness of our PD and investigating its critical factors. Finally, we discuss the strengths and

weakness of our model, as well as its significance in light of the innovations that will surely

follow efforts to update national science standards.

We will address the following questions:

a. How did collaborative resource teams design and enact PD to foster teacher

participation in inquiry during their respective short courses?

b. What factors about the PD influenced the content knowledge teachers learned during

their short courses?

c. What role, if any, did the ways in which the resource teams used inquiry in their PD

experiences effect what teachers learned in the short courses?


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Rites Pd Study Intro - 2014-09-10