| Abstract: |
Purpose. The purpose of this design research was to investigate how professional development in assessment can serve as a driver for more equitable teaching and learning. Through two design studies, we examined teachers’ choices of meaningful phenomena to anchor assessments and how they shifted over time.
Perspective(s). Anchoring tasks in specific phenomena to be explained or problems to be solved provides a context for eliciting students’ understandings of science and engineering practices (DCIs), disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), and crosscutting concepts (CCCs) (Achieve, 2018). From an equity perspective, it is important to choose anchors that are meaningful to students and their communities (National Research Council, 2012, p. 278).
Methods. We conducted two design studies, in which we iterated upon a professional development workshop over two years. Each study included two conditions: one in which teachers experienced a workshop (PD condition), and one where they were given tools to support assessment design to use on their own (On your own condition). Our high level conjecture behind our design studies involved engaging teachers in task adaptation and design activities as powerful contexts for promoting teacher learning. In our 20-hour workshop series, teachers first adapted tasks, developing prompts to a given scenario (a rendering of a phenomenon or problem), then had the opportunity to design their own. We provided teachers with model assessments, examples of potential phenomena for use in assessment, and tools for designing prompts. Based on our first design study, we provided additional model tasks and opportunities for feedback in the second design study.
Data sources and analysis. We had 12 participants in the first design study (6 PD condition, 6 On your own) and 13 participants (4 PD condition, 9 on your own) in the second design study. We collected teacher-designed assessments before and after the workshop series and interviewed participants at the end. We designed a rubric to assess the extent to which teachers designed assessment tasks that involved students using the 3Ds in integrated ways to explain a phenomenon or solve a problem.
Findings. In both design studies, we saw growth across both groups in their use of scenarios to assess students’ 3D understanding, with bigger shifts among teachers who participated in the workshop series. However, what was “at stake” for students in figuring out phenomena was not clear; nor was there much agency left for students. These findings highlighted the need for greater attention to the students’ perspective-- making clear the relevance of explaining the phenomenon to students’ own interests and identities--in our design. Accessibility of scenarios was a persistent issue that both we and teachers identified. We identified a need for more explicit supports for presenting scenarios using multiple modalities (e.g., Fine & Furtak, 2020).
Scholarly significance of the study. This study adds to our understanding of the breadth of support needed for teachers to shift assessment practices, supports that extend beyond aligning to standards, and to consider strategies for supporting more equitable scenario development to motivate students’ meaningful and integrated use of the three dimensions in assessments.
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