Do Highly Science Qualified Teachers Provide High Quality Science Instruction? Evidence from the Boston Science Partnership
These findings suggest that, regardless of their qualifications/content knowledge, new teachers continue to require professional development and other supports to ensure that they are able to enact district pedagogy skillfully and consistently. At the same time, if experience increases teachers' ability to manage classroom behavior and avoid other disruptions that reduce the time available for "real" instruction, it is reasonable to ask what then, is preventing them from focusing more evenly on all aspects of the district's instructional model? Why does the explain-related aspect of the 5E model continue to receive most teachers' attention to the exclusion of the other components of the model? If this is the case, what additional supports or adjustments could be made by the Boston Science Partnership and/or the district's science program to address these trends?
Interviews with teachers and administrators identified challenges that impeded teachers' abilities to enact the district's science program as intended which provides additional evidence of the need for continued professional development. For example, both teachers and administrators cited lack of experience and pedagogical content knowledge as limiting factors. However challenges that are not amenable to such interventions included lack of resources and challenging students. Interestingly, teachers discussed students' lack of motivation and behavior issues as problematic while administrators discussed the heterogeneity of students and the complexity of teaching a diverse student body. Lastly, teachers (and not administrators) cited the lack of time necessary to do their job well, that forced them to teach in ways they might prefer. In addition to the obstacles cited by teachers and administrators, other explanations could relate to the instructional materials and curricula themselves. Are they structured in such a way that they lend themselves to greater distribution of emphasis in high school and less so in middle school?
These systemic issues - time, resources, and student characteristics - raise a challenging question for BSP and other math science partnerships: what can be done to ensure that the professional development and ongoing support provided by the project have enduring influences in light of the systemic challenges that teachers and administrators face?
