Purpose: By 2010 it is expected that 40% of school age children will be of Latino, African American, Asian, or Native American descent, often sharing poverty, limited parent educational attainment, and limited English proficiency. Students in these groups typically have less access to science education and lower achievement in science. Fundamental to the problem is the limited knowledge base on how to teach science to diverse students and how to prepare the teachers that serve them. Using sociocultural theory and research, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence has identified Five Pedagogy Standards to teach students at risk for educational failure: (1) joint productive activity among teacher and students; (2) developing language and literacy across the curriculum; (3) connecting school to students' lives; (4) teaching complex thinking; and 5) engaging students through dialogue, especially the instructional conversation. The purpose of this project is to implement and test an experimental model of pre-service elementary science teacher education based on the Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy, in order to prepare elementary school teachers to teach science to the increasingly diverse student body in U.S. elementary schools.

Project Activities: This experimental program will develop novice teachers' learning of science content and pedagogy through an integrated continuum of teacher education experiences, and analyze the impact on their instructional practice and the learning of students in their classrooms. The Center's culturally responsive Five Pedagogy Standards will be integrated into every stage of teacher preparation and induction from the science teaching methods courses in the post-baccalaureate credential program, to the clinical setting of student teaching and induction in first year of teaching. The program will have three main components: (1) a Five Standards science teaching methods course; (2) coaching in the Five Standards Pedagogy in the student teaching practicum; and (3) practicum placement in an elementary classroom that models the Five Standards Pedagogy.

Products: Products from this project include a teachers' education program for teaching science, and published papers.

Setting: This project is set in California, in a county characterized by cultural, linguistic, and economic diversity, and low educational attainment.

Population: Participants will be a minimum of 150 novice teachers drawn from the elementary student teacher cohort admitted to a state teaching college.

Intervention: This experimental program will develop novice teachers' learning of science content and pedagogy through an integrated continuum of teacher education experiences, and analyze the impact on their instructional practice and the learning of students in their classrooms. The Center's culturally responsive Five Pedagogy Standards will be integrated into every stage of teacher preparation and induction from the science teaching methods courses in the post-baccalaureate credential program, to the clinical setting of student teaching and induction in first year of teaching. The program will have three main components: (1) a Five Standards science teaching methods course; (2) coaching in the Five Standards Pedagogy in the student teaching practicum; and (3) practicum placement in an elementary classroom that models the Five Standards Pedagogy.

Research Design and Methods: The study will use an experimental design to compare the learning and development of pre-service teaching students. Seventy-five students will be randomly assigned to the experimental program, and 75 to the traditional teaching program. Evidence of program impact will be assessed through: (1) novice teachers' use of the Five Pedagogy Standards in instruction during their student teaching practicum and in the first year of teaching; and (2) the relation between the strength of implementation of the Five Standards in their classrooms during their first year of teaching, and the science learning of their students.

Control Condition: The student teachers in the control condition will receive the traditional teaching program.

Key Measures: Two measures will be used to assess novice teachers' use of the Five Standards Pedagogy in instruction and its impact on student achievement in program graduates' classrooms-the Standards Performance Continuum, and the California Science Standards Test.

Data Analytic Strategy: Multiple analytic strategies will be employed; analyses of the achievement data from students of the novice teachers will take into consideration the hierarchical structure of the data.

Products and Publications

Book chapter

Bravo, M.A., and Cervetti, G.N. (2009). Teaching Vocabulary Through Text and Experience. In A.E. Farstrup, and S. Samuels (Eds.), What Research has to say About Vocabulary Instruction(pp. 130–149). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, Inc.

Stoddart, T., Solís, J.L., Tolbert, S., and Bravo, M.A. (2010). A Framework for the Effective Science Teaching of English Language Learners in Elementary Schools. In D.W. Sunal, C.S. Sunal, and E.L. Wright (Eds.), Teaching Science With Hispanic Ells in K–16 Classrooms (pp. 151–182). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Journal article, monograph, or newsletter

Bravo, M.A. (2011). Leveraging Spanish-Speaking Els Native Language to Access Science. National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, 3(4): 21–23.

Tolbert, S., and Knox, C. (2016). ‘They might know a lot of things that I don't know': Investigating Differences in Preservice Teachers' Ideas About Contextualizing Science Instruction in Multilingual Classrooms. International Journal of Science Education, 38(7), 1133–1149.

Proceeding

Solis, J.L., Bravo, M.A., and Stoddart, T. (2009). Integrating Science and Diversity Education: A Model for Pre-Service Elementary Teacher Preparation Programs. In Proceedings of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching Annual Meeting. Reston, VA: National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST).

** This project was submitted to and funded under Teacher Quality: Mathematics and Science Education in FY 2006.