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CAREER: Expanding Latinxs' Opportunities to Develop Complex Thinking in Secondary Science Classrooms through a Research-Practice Partnership

Hosun Kang, Jasmine Nation, Dana Conlin, & Leiny Garcia at UCI

Kris Posavec, Ali Delcastillo at TUSD

Our work is supported by the National Science Foundation, & Tustin Unified School District

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Who We Are

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Students & parents

Science Teachers

Teacher leaders

UCI Scientists

UCI Researchers

Leveraging multiple forms of expertise to solve a complex problem
Co-constructing knowledge
Developing a sustainable system of improvement

Expanding opportunity to learn

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Purposes that Inform Our Work

Supporting students to engage in deep thinking beyond memorization; helping students to figure things out
Bringing back the ‘love of science’
Engaging in the process, making multiple connections, instead of showing a simple, final answer
Moving beyond right vs. wrong; create the culture of learning, instead of playing the ‘school game’
Promoting equity and justice through the learning of science

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-Notes from our meeting on May 22, 2019

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What Do We Do �to Achieve Our Goals?

Educational & Research Activities

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Supporting Professional Learning

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Co-designing Inclusive Curriculum

Designing engaging & empowering science learning experiences

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A unit storyline & assessments

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Q: What is the best material for a reusable water bottle?

Q: How are modern cars designed to keep you and your loved ones safe in a collision?

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On-site PD: Supporting Principled Implementation of the Co-designed Curriculum

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Instruction Round on 10/14/2019, Tustin High School

Instruction Round on 11/07/2019, Tustin High School

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HS Educational Researcher Club

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Tustin High School: 25 students

Foothill High School: 22 students

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Collaborating With District Partners

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Monthly meetings with Kris & Ali at the district office

Working with Administrators

(e.g., Walk-through with principles)

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Collaborating with UCI Scientists

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“Broker”

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Conducting Research to Advance Knowledge

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Studying teacher learning

Video-recording (PD, Classroom)
Interview
Exit survey
Student Experience Survey (SES)
Artifacts

Studying student learning

Initial/final assessments
Observation
Focus student interview
Identity survey (ISME)

Studying RPP

Video recordings of PD
Partner Interviews
Meeting notes
Survey Tools

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Studying Teacher Learning

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Problems of practice: Making all students’ voice heard

Summer PD in August

On-site PD in Nov. 7th

Classroom observation in Nov. & Dec.

Tracking take-up of framework, tools, and practices across settings & over time

Five Design Principles

Making it matter
Supporting sense-making
Attending to race, language, and identities
Building a welcoming community
Disrupting the power hierarchy

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“We’re trying to incorporate the 5 principles as much as we can”

UCI Researchers

“The theme of community during the PD, that one really struck me because it was something I was really passionate about when I was first teaching...but then curriculum happened, and then there was just so much you had to cover, and standards, and I just felt like I didn’t know how to make those two things meet...It’s building that community in here, and we’re going to be able to use it on our first unit with earthquakes for community surveys.”

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Studying Teacher Learning

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Problems of practice: Making all students’ voice heard

Summer PD in August

On-site PD in Nov. 7th

Classroom observation in Nov. & Dec.

Tracking take-up of framework, tools, and practices across settings & over time

“We’re trying to incorporate the 5 principles as much as we can.”

Five Design Principles

Making it matter
Supporting sense-making
Attending to race, language, and identities
Building a welcoming community
Disrupting the power hierarchy

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Conducting Research to Inform Action: Student Experience Survey

Five Design Principles (Kang, in preparation)

Making it matter
Supporting sense-making
Attending to race, language, and identities
Building a welcoming community
Disrupting the power hierarchy

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The survey was modified from SEET by Penuel et al.

Dana

The way we are capturing students’ learning and their in-classroom experience with the curriculum is through a short practical measure.

This survey is really designed to understand how the five design principles come alive in the classroom and explicitly attend to gender, race, and language.

This measure is not used to evaluate teachers in anyway, but rather it was designed to be a tool for them. So every week we compile students’ feedback and give it to their teacher, so they can directly see how the material mattered to students, if it made sense, if the classroom supports a welcoming community, and so on, while highlighting if students are experiencing the curriculum differentially based on gender, race, and language.

For example, one of our teachers noticed that her female students did not feel like she cared about them. So she used that information and made efforts in class to talk to every female student and implicitly and explicitly demonstrated that she cared for them.

In another example, one of our teachers had a goal that student felt cared about and the survey was able to affirm that this goal was met.

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Studying Our Partnership

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Use the framework as a tool to monitor & study our RPP activities with a Critical Participatory Action approach.

RPP progress tracker

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Success & Challenges

Success

Designing and enacting inclusive curriculum
Teachers’ use of data to improve practices
Students’ improved performances
HS educational researchers!
Amazing undergraduate RAs

Challenges

Broadening participation
Data storage and organization
Workload

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Questions?

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