LESSON PLAN CRITIQUE

Lesson Plan Critique



Lesson Plan Critique

Introduction

Curriculum materials are important resources with which teachers make pedagogical decisions about the design of science learning environments. To become well-started beginning elementary teachers capable of engaging their students in inquiry-based science, preservice elementary teachers need to learn to use science curriculum materials effectively. Thus far, few other studies have investigated how preservice elementary teachers adapt science curriculum materials to better reflect five essential features of inquiry-based teaching and learning articulated in contemporary science education reform. Findings from previous research suggest that preservice elementary teachers can productively adapt science curriculum materials to make them more inquiry-based.

The mixed-methods study presented here extends these findings by illustrating the essential features of inquiry preservice teachers emphasize in their curricular adaptations and the specific types of adaptations the preservice teachers make. Results suggest that the preservice teachers consistently attended to all five essential features of inquiry in their curricular adaptations. The types of adaptations that they made to promote each of these features of inquiry provide insight into their curriculum design practices and learning about science as inquiry that can serve as important leverage points for teacher education experiences and curriculum materials designed to support elementary teachers' science teaching practice and learning.

Teachers analyze curriculum materials for two primary reasons in the United States. First, school districts routinely adopt and mandate the use of published curricular programs. These programs equip teachers with much needed resources but vary in quality. For example, many are inconsistent with reform-based standards and practices, failing to attend to alternative ideas, provide relevant representations and phenomena, and scaffold sense-making. Poor quality materials do not adequately support student learning and thus need to be adapted to overcome these limitations. Second, curriculum developers typically design curriculum materials for a wide audience and general context. Thus, teachers need to use curriculum materials in flexibly adaptive ways to meet the needs, interests, and experiences of their specific classroom (Engberg, 2009, 25).

Theoretical Perspectives on the Teacher-Curriculum Relationship

This research is grounded in contemporary perspectives on the teacher-curriculum relationship that emphasize the active, participatory interactions by which curriculum materials are translated into classroom activity. Curriculum materials have long been viewed as a primary means through which to infuse the methods and goals of educational reform into the science classroom. Historically, for their part, teachers were often considered passive enactors of these curriculum materials. Most curricular resources developed over the years were designed to speak through teachers rather than directly to them. Teachers rarely enact curriculum materials precisely as written. Contemporary perspectives on the teacher-curriculum relationship have recognized and are beginning to embrace as an affordance the important role teachers play in curriculum materials use.

Curriculum materials play an active role in mediating this participatory relationship by enabling and constraining teachers' curricular decision making. Shaped by historical, social, and cultural values, curriculum materials contain particular ideas that specify what science concepts are important to teach and what pedagogical methods are most effective. These material resources influence what teachers learn from curriculum materials ...