Early Childhood Educators’ Declarative Knowledge of the Next Generation Science Standards

Conference Poster (Faculty180)

cited authors

  • Hapgood, Susanna E.; Heuring, Jeanna; Wilson, Grant; Czerniak, Charlene M

description

  • <p>In this presentation we share data regarding preschool – third grade teachers’ understandings of the Next Generation Science Standards’ three dimensions. In June 2019, twenty-eight early childhood educators in the Midwest of the United States took a 10-item multiple choice pre-assessment regarding the language and ideas of the Next Generation Standards (NGSS) prior to a two-week summer institute and year-long professional development project focused on understanding and using the NGSS to plan and enact inquiry science and engineering design instruction. The assessment reported on in this presentation, which focused on declarative knowledge of the NGSS, was one of several data sources to provide information about the teachers’ declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge of engaging young children in inquiry science and engineering design. Among the pre-institute results, we found that cross-cutting concepts were the most unfamiliar ideas for educators. We also found that teachers often over-estimated how many science and engineering practices children would engage in within particular aspects of an investigation. When asked to examine a kindergarten/first grade performance expectation (PE) from the NGSS, 25% of the teachers correctly labeled the part of the PE that referred to a disciplinary core idea, 21% correctly identified the portion that referred to a scientific and engineering practice, while only 4% (one teacher) correctly identified the cross-cutting concept. Post-institute results (not available prior to the deadline for this proposal) will also be reported upon. Professional development providers and preservice teacher educators may find this presentation of interest and the very easily administered measure useful for their contexts.</p>

authors

publication date

  • 2020

presented at event