Evaluating the Effects of Intervention on Teacher Learning in an Online Heat and Temperature Course.
The Fulcrum Institute for Leadership in Science Education is an NSF/MSPfunded grant under the auspices of the Departments of Education and Physics of Tufts University in partnership with TERC. The Institute aims to promote K-8 teachers' understanding of physical science and as well as their pedagogical content knowledge through online courses as well as a face-to-face weeklong summer institutes.
The three courses and summer institutes engages teachers in inquiry-based learning about the properties of matter, heat and temperature, and global climate and earth's energy balance. The themes-modeling, mathematization and molecules (the molecular theory of matter)-recur in the approach to various topics.
The National Research Council's NSES Standards for the Professional Development for Teachers of Science asserts that teachers of science must learn "essential science content through the perspectives and methods of Inquiry, having the same opportunities as their students will have to develop understanding." Professional development research has often found that when teachers learn the content matter deeply, and learn how children think about these topics, they tend to focus their teaching on student understanding rather than their own teaching behaviors (Kennedy, 1998).
The Fulcrum Institute grew out of these calls for reform as well as from previous educational initiatives created by TERC, a Fulcrum partner. Through the Cheche Konnen Project at TERC, education researchers found that teachers of science could not be expected to change their teaching when handed a new curriculum, but had to be engaged in sense-making process themselves that allowed them to "think, talk, and act scientifically" (Warren & Roseberry, 1995). The first online course was based on prior work initiated by Lesley University Science in Education (M.Ed.) online program created in collaboration with TERC (Doubler & Piaget, 2006).
Inquiry science, learner-centered classrooms, and formative assessment characterize the Fulcrum Institute model. The Fulcrum Institute makes use of multimedia to highlight how students go through some of the same difficulties and questions about science that the teachers themselves are struggling with. In the online discussion forums, where teachers meet to present and discuss their work, teachers are active learners who collaborate to build understanding and to share experiences. Modeling, active and collaborative learning are some of the characteristics of effective professional development that have been suggested by educational researchers and the National Research Counsel (Abdal-Haqq, 1995; Putnam & Borko, 1997).
The courses are ordered so that the teachers work first with directly observable properties of matter and gradually shift (during the Summer Institute directly after Course One) to phenomena that require the elaboration of models about microscopic mechanisms. The teachers continue to shift between macro-and micro-level phenomena as the program continues with F2 -Conceptual Distinctions: The Case of Heat and Temperature and F3 -Global Climate and Earth's Energy Balance.
The present report looks into teachers' discussions and development during. Fulcrum course two (F2)-Conceptual Distinctions: The Case of Heat and Temperature.
Heat and temperature are often confused with each other (Sozbilir, 2003) even though they are conceptually very different: the flames in a forest fire and those of a lit match can have the same temperature but the former gives off far more heat than the latter. Students commonly regard heat as an intrinsic property of an object. At other times they treat heat as a substance that flows (Driver et al. 1994, Erikson 1979,1980) throughout matter. These concepts are challenging across a wide range of conditions. They often believe, for example, that that the temperature of water continues to increase after it has reached its boiling point and that substances can change temperature during phase change (Grayson et al.,1995; Tiberghien, 1985). Laurence Viennot identifies the reasoning students use to explain heat transfer as linear causal reasoning. This same way of reasoning is used by naive learners to explain other scientific phenomena such as electrical circuits and is found that this assumption of linear cause and effect can impede learning of sophisticated science concepts (Viennot, 1997; Grotzer, 2000). An expert would use multivariable reasoning when explaining heat transfer, knowing that an explanation of heat transfer must consider the complexity of the system.
For a learner to move from novice ideas to those ideas of the expert, so too must their reasoning progress. Smith et al. (2004) in proposing a learning progression for the atomic molecular theory, underscore the need for teaching "more sophisticated ways of reasoning" through the "big ideas" or central principals of science and moving from macroscopic models of matter to microscopic models.
In F2, participants work to disentangle the related but fundamentally different concepts of heat and temperature. They use probes to measure temperature change as they explore heat transfer in the environment around them. They use computer software to explore and explain thermal phenomena using a microscopic particulate theory of matter. The temperature data and the computer-modeling tool are used to distinguish different modes of heat transfer (conduction, convection and radiation) as well as the contrast between heat and temperature. By collecting and presenting their own data, teachers engage in scientific practices such as measuring, predicting, interpreting data, and making inferences. The online discussion forums give them the opportunity to evaluate and argue claims. Teachers also investigate students' ideas about heat transfer through videos and interviews.
The science content of the three-course Fulcrum sequence is guided by three themes that are generative in nature and can serve to shape the continuing learning of teachers. They are:
- The centrality of models in the ways humans describe and explain natural phenomena
- The intertwined nature of mathematics and science
- The fundamental role of the particulate theory of matter in the explication of natural phenomena (Smith et al., 2004)
These themes were chosen because each is essential in guiding the lifelong science learning of educated adults, in the case of the Fulcrum Institute, in-service K-8 teachers. They serve to shape the way we approach the particular content we teach. The ways in which they shape the particular content is explicitly discussed in the courses.
Each Fulcrum online course is divided into fourteen sessions. Half of the sessions are pedagogy sessions when the teachers increase their pedagogical content knowledge by studying inquiry learning, formative assessment, children's understanding of science, and learning theory. The teachers are also introduced to curriculum planning tools such as the Atlases of Scientific Literacy, The Benchmarks for Science, and the Massachusetts State Frameworks.
The other half of each course consists of science content sessions where teachers use hands-on investigations or computer modeling software for collecting data, interacting with course content materials, and then interpreting, making sense of, and explaining their findings to their peers. Each online discussion group is made up of 4-6 heterogeneously grouped teachers and one facilitator (a paid instructor). The online discussion groups consist of elementary and middle school teachers from different districts and schools, with a wide range of science experiences and university backgrounds.
The first Fulcrum cohort, a group of twenty-five K-8 teachers with diverse undergraduate science backgrounds, completed all three courses and the summer institute of the Fulcrum program in May 2006. Based on formative evaluations of each session while Cohort One teachers were taking the courses, and from findings of this research, many changes were made for the second piloting of the courses. Course One (F1), Some of What Matters about Matter, was created anew for Cohort Two. (During the first piloting of the Fulcrum courses, the original course one "Try Science" was borrowed from TERC and Lesley University.) Course Two (F2), Conceptual Distinctions: The Case of Heat and Temperature was revised extensively. Course Three (F3), Global Climate: Earth Systems and Energy Balance is currently in revision (Fall 2007). Cohort Two, a group of 31 K-8 teachers, with equally diverse undergraduate science backgrounds will complete the Fulcrum Program in May 2008. This group is currently completing F2.
