Elementary teachers’ use of content knowledge to evaluate students’ thinking in the life sciences

ABSTRACT

Science learning environments should provide opportunities for students to make sense of and enhance their understanding of disciplinary concepts. Teachers can support students’ sense-making by engaging and responding to their ideas through high-leverage instructional practices such as formative assessment (FA). However, past research has shown that teachers may not understand FA, how to implement it, or have sufficient content knowledge to use it effectively. Few studies have investigated how teachers gather information to evaluate students’ ideas or how content knowledge factors into those decisions, particularly within the life science discipline. We designed a study embedded in a multi-year professional development program that supported elementary teachers’ development of disciplinary knowledge and FA practices within science instruction. Study findings illustrate how elementary teachers’ life science content knowledge influences their evaluation of students’ ideas. Teachers with higher levels of life science content knowledge more effectively evaluated students’ ideas than teachers with lower levels of content knowledge. Teachers with higher content exam scores discussed both content and student understanding to a greater extent, and their analyses of students’ ideas were more scientifically accurate compared to teachers with lower scores. These findings contribute to theory and practice around science teacher education, professional development, and curriculum development.

KEYWORDS:

• Elementary science
• life science
• formative assessment
• elementary teachers

Acknowledgements

We thank Laura Zangori, Tina Vo, and anonymous reviewers for their help in thinking about these issues and their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Jaime Sabel completed doctoral work at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and will be an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Memphis beginning in the fall of 2016.

Cory Forbes is an Associate Professor of Science Education and Coordinator of the Science Literacy Initiative at the Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Leslie Flynn is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Iowa.

Additional information

Funding

This work is funded by the Spencer Foundation, the Iowa Board of Regents, the State of Iowa, and the Title IIA Improving Teacher Quality: State Grants Program [grant number 201400084].