Co-Designing a Collaborative Curriculum for Secondary School Biology

Co-Designing a Collaborative Curriculum for Secondary School Biology

EARLI 2009 - Amsterdam

Vanessa L. Peters and James D. SlottaOntario Institute for Studies in EducationUniversity of Toronto, Canada

Knowledge Communities in the Classroom

Reflection

ResearchShare

InformationConsequential

Task

Deep Disciplinary Content

Progressive Inquiry (Hakkarainen, 2003)

Knowledge Building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003)

Fostering a Community of Learners (Brown & Campione, 1996)

High level of student agency

Distributed expertise

Community knowledge base

Technology scaffolds

Research Question

Can secondary science teachers adopt a knowledge community approach in their classrooms while still addressing the mandated curriculum?

High content volume

Targeted learning outcomes

Significant changes in teachers’ practices

Time commitment

Conventional assessments

Knowledge Community

Access to technology

Previous studies of FCL in secondary classrooms

Biology classroom: Teachers tended to revert back to traditional teaching teaching modes; loss of emphasis on big ideas of curriculum (Rico & Shulman, 2004).

Mathematics classroom: Implementation requires a reconceptualization of mathematics instruction, as well as some rethinking of the essential features of FCL (Sherin, Mendez, & Louis, 2004).

Social studies classroom: Pragmatic nature of social studies compatible with FCL; teachers embraced jigsaw activity, but still “defaulted” to familiar methods (Mintrop, 2004).

Assessable Learning Outcomes

Community Knowledge Base

Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) Model(Slotta, 2007; Slotta & Peters, 2008)

Content Expectations & Learning Goals

Emergent Themes & Community Voice

Scaffolded Inquiry

Activities

Collaborative Knowledge

Construction

Two Iterations of KCI

Co-Design: Researchers and teachers work together in defined roles to design and develop an educational innovation (Roschelle, Penuel, & Shechtman, 2006).

Human Physiology

๏ 1 week (spring 2006)

๏CKC activity (2 class periods):

• Human system diseases

๏ Inquiry activity: • Challenge Cases

๏ 102 students, 2 teachers

Canadian Biodiversity

๏ 8 weeks (fall 2006/winter 2007)

• Ecozones and biomes

๏CKC activity (6 class periods):

• Biodiversity issues๏ Inquiry activity:

• Research proposal

๏ 114 students, 3 teachers

Scaffolded wiki environment

Supports collaborative authoring

Easy to use, fast start-up

All document revisions are archived

Customized templates



Construction


Lesson on Internal Systems (respiratory, circulatory, digestive)

Students used web to create wiki pages using “Disease Page” script

Iteration 1: Human Physiology

Embedded instructional prompts to target curriculum expectations

All 102 students contributed to the same community resource

KCI: Collaborative Knowledge Construction





Scaffolded Inquiry

Activities


Construction

“Challenge Case”: Fictitious medical case study about patient and physician

Created and solved cases in different internal systems

KCI: Scaffolded Inquiry

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Disease Pages (23)

Knowledge Resource Base

Mean SD

Revisions 23.05 10.27

Word Count 1212.9 404.77

Authors Page Revisions

Assessable Learning

Outcomes

Scaffolded Inquiry

Activities



Construction




Physiology Score Rest of Exam

Physiology scores significantly higher with new curriculum F(2, 96) = 7.236, p = .001)

Same teacher all 3 years

Similar open-ended questions

Student achievement on final exam

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007

Academic Year

82.42 83.35

91.60

67.3866.6068.18

Students used the community knowledge base when solving challenge cases, but did not engage deeply with their peer’s work.

Lack of any real connection between the scaffolded inquiry activities and the community knowledge base.

Students were dissatisfied that their wiki disease pages were not formally graded.

Iteration 1 Design Challenges

8-week unit on Canada’s biodiversity (ecozones, biomes, sustainability issues)

Students used customized “Ecozone Page” script when creating Knowledge Resource Base

Iteration 2: Biodiversity

KCI: Collaborative Knowledge Construction

Components Criteria Value

Completion & Accuracy • Page includes all categories specified in template

30%

Quality & Relevancy • Logical organization; clear navigation; relevant pictures/diagrams

20%

Organization • Logical organization; clear navigation; includes pictures/diagrams

10%

Sources Cited • All sources cited; consistent use of MLA or APA

10%

Contribution to the page • Identify individual contributions; equitable participation

10%

Value of contribution • Explain how edits contributed to development of wiki page

10%

Written Communication • Scientific terminology; concise and on-topic

8%

Links • Reduce redundancy 2%

Ecozone page assessment criteria

0102030405060708090

100

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Ecoz

one

Page

Sco

re

Biodiversity Exam Score

= Individual Score

Relationship between ecozone pages and final exam scores

Significant correlation r(49) = .38, p = .0056

Biodiversity scores significantly higher with new curriculum F(2, 113) = 7.133, p = .001)

One teacher taught all 3 years



0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007

Academic Year

Biology Score Rest of Exam

92.92

84.2485.56

83.4681.54 79.68

Ecozone page peer assessment comments

!

Comment Type Example

1. Requests for additional content 28% “Maybe add a section on Bacteria? I’m pretty sure there must be lots of bacteria in this ecozone.”

2. Asking a question 2% “Does anyone know how to centre a pic without affecting the text?”

3. Reporting one’s own contribution 37% “Anyhoo, I was a primary contributor to the short

summary the part on root rot and pine beetles”

4. Positive feedback 9% “Overall it was excellent and informative, we enjoyed reading it!”

5. Conversational 24% “That was me, the internet logged me off without me knowing!”

Peer Review Comments

Biodiversity scores significantly higher with new curriculum F(2, 113) = 7.133, p = .001)

One teacher taught all 3 years



0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007

Academic Year

Biology Score Rest of Exam

92.92

84.2485.56

83.4681.54 79.68

“I was the person with the foot in the classroom - knowing the curriculum well enough to know what’s going to meet the needs, or if we’ll have enough time, or hey, cool idea how can we implement that?”

“It’s kind of funny because this year I was setting up a wiki for two other teachers. It’s as if you and I totally switched roles… I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden I was comfortable with it, comfortable enough to make mistakes in front of the kids. And that to me is a real level of comfort, because I know I can fix it up or say, okay, how can I fix this?”

- Kathy (Science teacher)

Teacher’s Comment:

“I thought this was a more interactive, more fun way to do [the unit] instead of just getting the notes. Because that’s what we usually do for pretty much every unit. We have the projector up and it’s just notes we copy down.

- Jennifer (biology student)

“I don’t think the wiki was a one-time thing where you’re like, “oh, I’m finished and I can stop working on it.” Like, for me, I’d have to go back and edit it once in a while because I’d come across some new piece of information.”

- Robert (biology student)

Student Comments:

Students were overwhelmed with the amount of wiki editing that was required. Teachers still uncertain how to assess knowledge base.

Need more explicit scaffolding between knowledge base inquiry activities.

Co-design meetings were more difficult to coordinate with three teachers, not all teachers participated equitably.

Iteration 2 Design Challenges

Next Steps

Tracking knowledge flow: during collaborative knowledge construction, and during inquiry activities (students’ access of knowledge resources).

Analyzing resource base for individual and group contributions, connections to ideas and growth of knowledge.

Determining the extent to which the curriculum addressed the curriculum content expectations.

Knowledge “transactions”

Visualizing knowledge construction with Swimlanes

Thank you!

Universiteit Utrecht, July 8, 2009

Vanessa L. [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]