Education Commons^™

Using Short-Term Professional Development To Increase Science Teacher Confidence For Integrating The Ngss Engineering Standards, Janet Lalonde

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Teacher professional development has long been acknowledged as a useful tool to improve instructional methods and to increase the likelihood of successful implementation of new standards. The duration of the training is often identified as a factor that determines how successful professional development experiences can be, with the best options taking place over several days and for more than 40 hours. However, with serious limitations in time, funding, and substitute teachers, districts must often consider offering short-term professional development instead.

This case study followed a professional development experience of seven high school science teachers as they spent a day learning …

Quit Doing The Lesson And Start Doing Physics, Katelyn Mccarthy

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Getting students to shift from doing the lesson to doing science (physics) is not only the goal of science teachers across the state, but it is the goal of the most recent standards released by the state of Michigan. To aid students in shifting from thinking like students to thinking like scientists, this study sought to explore how increased feedback, provided by the teacher on students’ work, as well as feedback provided by the students on their weekly learning, could shift students’ perceptions of science. Students’ perceptions of physics were measured using an adapted Colorado learning attitudes about science survey …