Exploring Teacher Adaptive Expertise in the Context of Elementary School Science Reforms

ABSTRACT

Across the country, states are adopting and implementing either Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or new state standards inspired by NGSS. Educators and researchers play a key role in the reform process as we design professional development (PD) and curriculum to support teachers in transitioning to NGSS. In this time of transition, close analysis of NGSS classroom enactments in elementary school can help us design better supports. Our study uses the framework of teacher adaptive expertise (TAE) to conduct a qualitative content analysis of five different fourth-grade teachers enacting the same NGSS lesson, Producing Electricity. To accomplish our analysis, we first synthesized existing literature and refine a working model of TAE in the field of elementary science education. In applying the lens of TAE to our data, we also develop a model of teacher routine expertise (TRE). We empirically illustrate three characteristics of TAE in our study: allowing student agency, adapting to student emergent understanding, and facilitating student-centered science discourse. Our study shows how different teachers use TAE and TRE moves in varying degrees when enacting the same lesson. Our results indicate that TAE moves align with NGSS shifts in the elementary science classroom while TRE moves reflect a more traditional science classroom. Our results have implications for the design of in-service teacher supports during this time of reform.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional development
• elementary science
• NGSS
• adaptive expertise
• teaching practices

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the teachers and students who worked with us to provide data and useful feedback on our program for this study. We also appreciate the contributions of Tracy Harkins, Joyce Tugel, Kristen Jones, Julie Thomas, Ashley Hunt, Tiffany Hwang and Anna Mcaloon to this work. We would also like to thank the (In) Process Space at ASU for the feedback on many manuscript drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A150272 to the University of Virginia. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.