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Surfacing Students' Prior Knowledge in Middle School Science Classrooms: Exception or the Rule?
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Surfacing Students' Prior Knowledge in Middle School Science Classrooms: Exception or the Rule?

Jennifer Mesa, Rose Pringle and Natalie King
Middle grades research journal, Vol.9(3), p.61
12/22/2014

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Abstract

Middle school is a critical time for students to develop a strong understanding of and appreciation for science, yet science education in the middle grades in the United States is in crisis. This research focuses on the practices of 18 predominately alternatively certified teachers in an intensive professional development program in a southeastern state as they accessed their students' prior ideas. The program engaged participants in specially designed, job-embedded graduate coursework in science education and science content, and other complementary experiences to support their enactment of a reform-based middle school science curriculum. The design of the program and the curriculum emphasized the importance of eliciting student preconceptions for meaningful science learning. Specifically, we asked, "How do middle school science teachers in an intensive professional development program surface students' prior knowledge?" The analysis of 61 classroom observations revealed that the teachers have begun to incorporate strategies to highlight the students' prior ideas in their instruction. In addition, they utilized a number of strategies, many of which were suggested in the reform-oriented curriculum the teachers were enacting. Despite ongoing professional development support, there was a great deal of variability in teachers' enactments of this practice with some important features of the practice not well observed in the classroom observations, such as probing and documenting student prior ideas.

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