Curriculum Development as a Mechanism for Changing Science Faculty Knowledge and Beliefs About Teaching and Learning
Despite significant pressure to reform science teaching and learning in K12 schools, higher education science content courses have remained relatively static. The contrast between what is expected of future and practicing teachers in their K12 classrooms and what they experience in content and instruction in typical college or university science courses taught by STEM faculty can be quite striking (Darling-Hammond and Bransford, 2005).
A major impediment to overcoming these deficiencies has been the lack of science instructional materials that reflect current research on teaching and learning and provide objective evidence of student learning. A review of "reformed" introductory science content courses from many institutions of higher education across the nation revealed that though revisions frequently led to reorganization of content, introduction of thematic approaches, or inclusion of group work and more interactive instructional approaches, few systematically applied cognitive science research findings to their instructional design. Even fewer implemented thorough research or evaluation studies to measure the impact of the revised courses.
More than any other discipline group, the physics education community has applied research findings on how people learn to the design of instructional materials for teachers of science (see for example, Goldberg et al., 2005; Laws, 1996; McDermott, 1996). In both Life and Earth Science there are only a few examples of reformed introductory courses informed by research on how people learn (Lawson et al., 2002; Chaplin and Manske, 2005). However, unlike the physics materials, the instructional materials for these courses are not widely available. Even when quality materials are available, to achieve positive student outcomes requires a learner-centered pedagogical approach. STEM faculty have few opportunities to explore research on how people learn, examine state or national science teaching standards for K12 schools, or learn and practice research-based instructional strategies. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a multi-institutional collaboration to develop undergraduate content courses for future and practicing elementary teachers in Life and Earth Science on the participating faculty themselves.
