This project focused on the ways that students' intuitive ideas can be leveraged to support their learning in high school science classrooms. Throughout the project, we explored the use of learning progressions--leveled descriptions of the ways that students' ideas develop over time--to support teachers' understanding of and productive use of students' ideas, particularly through the formative assessment practices of eliciting, interpreting, and responding to student ideas. Project work proceeded in three phases.

First, we studied how students' ideas about physics develop over time and considered how curriculum might support (or inhibit) that development. We elicited students' ideas about the topics of mechanical energy and momentum, using students' responses in cognitive interviews and to written questions to design learning progressions (and associated assessment items) to describe (and assess) students' learning of these topics. These learning progressions complement an existing learning progression for force and motion. At the same time, in collaboration with a high school physics teacher partner, we explored how students' ideas develop in a redesigned curriculum, created to treat students' intuitive ideas about force and motion as building blocks for future learning, rather than as "misconceptions" to be eliminated.

Second, we worked with a group of 7 in-service physics teachers, supporting and studying their use of the set of mechanics learning progressions (force and motion, mechanical energy, momentum) for two years. Teachers participated in workshops during the summer and in individual planning meetings with researchers throughout the academic year. In the planning meetings, we addressed teachers' concerns and provided feedback (based on classroom observations and cognitive interviews with students) and encouraged consideration of learning progression-related issues. Our analyses yielded important findings in relation to current hypotheses about how learning progressions might support teachers' formative assessment practices. In particular, teachers' use of learning progressions relied on finer-grained interpretations than suggested by learning progression levels. At the same time, these interpretations and some of the resulting uses are consistent with current research on the nature of student ideas. Reframing teachers' use of learning progressions as rational responses to the nature of students' ideas, we advance understanding of learning progression use beyond that based on idealized forms of these tools.

Third, we used findings from our work with in-service teachers to design learning opportunities for pre-service teachers. We piloted our approach with pre-service physics teachers in Germany, before developing materials for a science methods course at our university. A series of activities were designed to support pre-service teachers' micro-teaching (practice teaching short lessons to their peers) using learning progressions in physics, chemistry, and biology. We used video recordings of these microteaching lessons, pre-service teachers' written work and individual interviews to explore how the pre-service teachers used learning progressions to plan, enact, and reflect on these lessons. We found that pre-service teachers used learning progressions in many of the same ways as their more experienced peers. At the same time, we identified ways that pre-service teachers may require additional support to use learning progressions productively.

The project produced four learning progressions (two each for the topics of mechanical energy and momentum) and associated assessment items that can be used to support teachers' formative assessment practices. It also produced professional development materials that can be used to support pre- and in-service teachers' engagement with learning progressions and associated student ideas. The project provided professional development to 7 in-service teachers and 14 pre-service teachers, as well as research training for one high school physics teacher, one undergraduate student, four doctoral students, and one postdoctoral researcher. In addition to dissemination of results to the science education community through journal articles and conference presentations, the project engaged teachers and those in the educational measurement community with ideas and examples from our work through journal articles, conference presentations, a book chapter, and a teacher's guide.

Last Modified: 10/25/2020
Modified by: Alicia C Alonzo