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Project Summary
Preparing teachers who are committed to reform-based practices is an important aspect of nurturing reform in science education. These professionals, however, quickly meet the challenges and constraints of "real" classrooms, which, in many cases, pose perceived hurdles and roadblocks to the reform-based identity they had developed. This study takes an in-depth, longitudinal look at the perceptions, experiences, and commitments of 18 reform-minded practicing science teachers (two thirds of whom graduated from the same reform-focused teacher preparation program) to investigate their identities and priorities with respect to reform. Using a data set that includes weekly blog posts, transcripts of peer interviews, products of action research, surveys, and transcripts of collaborative video debriefs collected over the course of an academic year, this study examines the impact of context and experience on teachers' perceptions of reform, including (a) what aspects of reform-based pedagogy are feasible, desirable, and important; (b) what challenges are perceived to be most significant; and (c) what supports are perceived to be most effective. In addition, this study explicitly considers the effectiveness of three different interventions intended to engage and support practicing science teachers in their ongoing identity development with respect to reform, namely (a) personal, professional blogging; (b) collaborative action research; and (c) stimulated recall collaborative debriefs of a video sample of each participant's (self-identified) reform-based teaching.
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"Supporting science teachers in radically changing their professional practice (and thus their profession) involves engaging in safe and supportive contexts to experiment and experience the resulting powerful impact on their students' learning."
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