CYCO Professional Development Packages (PDPs) Teacher Responsiveness to Student Scientific Inquiry

1. CYCOProfessional Development Packages (PDPs)Teacher Responsiveness to Student Scientific Inquiry

2. Scientific Inquiry • Diverse interpretations of what is important about inquiry • Disagreements about the development of abilities for scientific inquiry: • Developmental perspective (abilities increase with the students age, as part of general cognitive development) • Critique to developmental perspectives (developmental perspectives have systematically underestimated children’s abilities) • Perspective that abilities can be explicitly taught as early as in elementary school • Disagreements regarding what productive inquiry entails • Scientific Inquiry refers to: • the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work • the activities of students in which they develop knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas, as well as an understanding of how scientists study the natural world • An important aspect of inquiry is the pursuit of causal, increasingly coherent explanations of natural phenomena (Hammer, 2004)

3. Even given a particular account of students’ inquiry… …there is the challenge of monitoring student progress in class • Assessing student thinking is challenging work, whether done during class by "instinct" because there is little time for reflection, or after class when there is more time for explicit reflection • There is the challenge of diagnosing student progress in any particular classroom situation • Identify → Interpret & Evaluate → Respond • Teachers need to develop: • their in-class "instincts," for evaluating what they see and responding with little reflection • a repertoire of instructional strategies that they can choose from at any particular situation in that little time available for teaching

4. Our purpose in the PDP • Help teachers to: • develop a range of teaching strategies that support student abilities for scientific inquiry • design and implement inquiry-based science lessons • move towards incorporating inquiry-based methods in science teaching and learning • Identify → Interpret & Evaluate → Respond to their students’ in-class scientific thinking and reasoning abilities • Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of professional development in science education in Cyprus by designing, implementing and evaluating a PDP design

5. PDPs • PDPs design was based on: • the current needs of science teaching in Cyprus from: • the perspective of the policy makers • the perspective of science teachers • current approaches of: • teaching Science as inquiry • teacher professional development • Area of focus: Develop teacher’s responsiveness to student scientific inquiry: • monitor the performance of the learner, • analyze the nature of the differences between students’ performance and the target performance, and • respond and assist appropriately to support the students’ progress • Length: 3 separate small-scale (ten 3-hour meetings each) • School level: Kindergarten, Elementary and Middle School • Science content area of focus: Physical Science

6. PDPs’ focal areas • Theoretical framework of current approaches for science teaching and learning • What is Science? What is Scientific Knowledge and how is this constructed? • Challenges faced in teaching science • Current trends in teaching and learning in Science • Students’ ideas about Science • Inquiry as a process of teaching and learning in science • Conceptual Understanding in Science: different perspectives • Epistemological competence • The development of abilities (e.g., analogical and mechanistic reasoning) • Inquiry approaches • The role of experiments in science teaching and learning • Uncertainty during experimental measurements • Hands- on experiments on “real” science • Investigation of moon phases • Implementation of science lessons • Principles of lesson plan design for teaching science • Design science lesson plans • Reflection and discussion about videos of exemplary science teaching practices • Development of teaching practices that support inquiry

7. What we have done so far • Literature review • current issues of science curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and professional development in Cyprus and in literature • Data collection and analysis • Investigated the current needs of science teaching in Cyprus from: • the perspective of the policy makers • national workshop(inspectors, science teacher educators, curriculum designers) • how they view and understand IBST/E • what their expectations from in-service science teachers are • the perspective of science teachers • method of focus group discussion (inquiry in science teaching and learning) • twenty in-service teachers in two groups for about 90 minutes • Videotaped examples of exemplary science teaching • prompts for teacher’s reflection • Teaching practices for supporting student inquiry in science • identified patterns of “instructional practices” that support student inquiry • what exemplary science teaching in terms of IBST/E looks like in authentic contexts • Development of PDPs • What we do now: Implement PDPs

8. WP6 the coming months (CYCO) • Implementation of the PDPs • Collection of pilot data for evaluation of the PDP • Evaluation of the PDPs • Analysis of data • Revisions to PDPs • Book chapter

9. Evaluation of PDPs • Pre- and post-interviews about teachers’: • pedagogical knowledge, • pedagogical content knowledge and • epistemological knowledge about teaching and learning in science through inquiry • Pre-interviews: data related to the current needs of the science teacher who will participate in the implementation of PDP • Post-interviews: will allow teachers to express their comments about the PDP and its effectiveness on their teaching and way of learning • Teachers reflective discussions: • Based on segments of videotaped lessons from different exemplary science teachers in Cyprus (variety of topics) • Teachers will: • discuss issues related to: • the nature of science • the characteristics of effective science teaching and • the various forms of inquiry teaching and learning in science • be prompted to try and develop their in-class "instincts”

10. Evaluation of PDPs • Teachers enactment • At the beginning of PDP: teachers will teach a lesson in a way that portrays his/her usual teaching practice • During PDP: teachers will teach at least 2 more lessons that will be designed collaboratively with other teachers and researchers • Teacher-designed science lessons • During PDP teachers will: • learn more about the aims, goals and objectives of an IBST/E science lesson • be provided with guidance to plan appropriate content, learning opportunities and evaluation strategies for students • develop, discuss and implement science lesson plans • enact pedagogical strategies • use materials • administer assessments associated with particular curriculum

11. Refinement of PDPs • The process of collecting and analyzing data during the implementation of the training packages that we will produce, will be used to: • document aspects of the design, development, implementation and validation of the training packages, • enable the subsequent refinement and revision of PDPs • inform design decisions about future professional development

12. Our ideas about our Case Study chapter • Through the activities (discussion-reflection-planning-implementation) of PDPs, teachers will be engaged in a process of action research studying and reflecting on their own practices. We want to focus on this process in order to: • Develop case studies of teachers • Describe their process of professional development • Describe the effectiveness of the PDP design

13. Principles for teacher PDP • The following principles are primarily the result of two data sources: • The needs from the Cyprus Education system • The ways that other European countries have used to address the same needs through teachers’ PDPs • Proposed Cyprus PDP’s principles: • School – based • Participating teachers identify the focus area(s) of the PDPs based on their daily teaching needs • Relate theoretical pedagogical principles to daily teaching practice • Use reflection on daily teaching practices • Relate to the National Curriculum • Long – term systematic Professional development • Quality assessment • Collaboration with the wider education community