Reframing Organizational Contexts from Barriers to Levers for Teacher Learning in Science Education Reform

ABSTRACT

A growing body of work regarding teacher learning and implementation of reform has pointed to the significant role organizational contexts play in shaping teachers’ engagement with reform and their implementation decisions. Within science education, the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and standards reflective of the Framework for K-12 Science Education by states in the US and Canada resurfaces a need to attend to teachers’ contexts in designing for the integration of these standards. To date, however, instructional contexts are generally cast as barriers to implementation and there is a scarcity of conceptual tools being utilized that support mature understandings of teachers’ learning and decision-making in context. In this paper, we review prior literature on the relationship between teachers’ organizational contexts and their learning and implementation of reform in science and other disciplines. We then present a conceptual framework rooted in organizational theory that can support nuanced understandings of teacher learning and implementation and guide the development of teacher-learning contexts. We argue that using a lens of organizational sensemaking complicates the teacher–context relationship for learning and implementation of reform and recasts teachers’ contexts and local expertise as important levers for learning. We conclude with a set of practices to guide the design of professional learning contexts that reflects this framing and that may enable deeper engagement and learning of science teachers in the context of reform.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional development
• teacher learning
• science standards
• reform implementation

Disclosure statement

We have no conflicts of interest to report.

Notes

¹ While what is described in the vignette takes place in a prior era of accountability (NCLB), teachers still experience similar accountability pressures. With the increase in science testing and adoption of new standards, science teachers may feel even greater pressures that in previous decades.