Prof. Hannah Sevian. A Teacher-Driven Partnership to Support Mid-Career Chemistry Teachers

A national model of professional development is being developed for mid-career teachers of chemistry in the US to strengthen their students’ chemical thinking through expanding their repertoire and knowledge of both domain-general and discipline-specific formative assessment practices. The successes and challenges of this work are discussed, along with how concurrent teacher-driven research has emerged from these. These processes are presented through examples of research studies that have been collaboratively designed and carried out by the teachers and university researchers in the partnership. One study used grounded theory to characterize how middle and high school students use structure-property relationships and benefits-costs-risks thinking in a formative assessment activity in which teachers asked students to decide on the best fuel to use in a vehicle. The second study employed focus groups to examine what teachers notice, how they interpret it, and how they would act in attending to these as they evaluate student work from a formative assessment activity that asks how students would control a specific reaction. The third example involves video analysis to study how teachers who design and lead the year-long professional development programme draw upon their expertise as classroom chemistry teachers in this form of peer leadership. Findings and implications about carrying out such work are presented through the lenses of building principled practical knowledge and addressing dilemmas that chemistry teachers face in strengthening their formative assessment practices.