The Students Learning Science through a Sustained Network of Students project at Southern Illinois University Edwardville (SIUE) provides hands-on professional development for high school chemistry teachers with an emphasis on science subject matter related to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Professional development activities at workshops include discussion of the standards, training in proper methods of curriculum design and evaluation, creation and testing of curriculum units and assessment tools, and a review of chemistry content (lectures, demonstrations, experiments, and sharing). All teachers in the project complete the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) (www.seconline.org) so that they are able to compare their chemistry curriculum to others and to the standards. In addition, 10-12 participants are trained in assessment techniques, lesson planning, and assessment tools development, and serve as Assessment Leaders. These Assessment Leaders serve as “coaches” for training other participating teachers and act as “liaisons” between the Project Directors and the participating teachers. Major expected outcomes from this project include aligning teaching efforts with CCSS and NGSS, and improved teacher content knowledge, content pedagogy, and contingent skills in high school chemistry. This in turn should lead to improved teacher practices in the classroom and laboratory. The result from these teacher-centered outcomes should be improved student practices that lead to improved student learning. Ultimately, the improvements noted above should result in considerable science department reform and potentially even school and district-wide reform. The free web-based curriculum development site Course Mason (www.coursemason.com) is used by project participants to build and share units and assessment tools for dissemination of the outputs from the workshops. This project is supported by the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) program.

Students learning science through a sustained network of teachers: Professional development for high school chemistry teachers in southwestern Illinois

251st National Meeting (2016)

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