Science EDUCATES (Science Educator Development: Understanding Content and Teaching it Effectively to Students)

Project Director: Valarie Akerson

Science EDUCATES is a two-year elementary science teacher development project. Its goals were developed with input from the partner school corporation (MCCSC, SOCS, and RBBCSC) superintendents and teachers, and are to improve K-6 teachers' (a) abilities to adapt their curricula to meet Indiana Academic Science Standards using the Curriculum Frameworks, (b) understandings of physical science content knowledge, (c) understandings of and abilities to teach through scientific inquiry, and (d) understandings of and abilities to teach nature of science (NOS), as well as elementary students' understandings of NOS.

During the 2004-2005 school year we met monthly at various school sites, exploring new science investigations, our conceptions of scientific inquiry, and nature of science. Project staff visited individual classroom sites, observing instruction and providing feedback to teachers. From our data analysis it is evident that teachers improved their understandings of science content, scientific inquiry, and nature of science, and are now implementing explicit reflective NOS instruction in their classrooms. During our two-week summer 2005 workshop, teachers designed action research studies to enable them to track the effectiveness of their instruction on their students' understandings of nature of science.

These action research studies will be carried out during the 2005-2006 school year. At the monthly school year meetings, we will provide support to teachers in terms of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. We will aid in observing their instruction and interviewing their students if that is part of their design. At the conclusion of the year, teachers will write formal reports of their research. We intend to propose the studies as a book that describes a research base for what elementary students are capable of understanding about nature of science through various explicit teaching approaches.