Supporting Preservice Teachers in Analyzing Curriculum Materials

Abstract

Developing evidence-based curricula is a common approach in science education research to improve the quality of teaching. Curriculum developers recurrently provide curriculum materials (CMs) to support teachers who design instruction in the classroom. However, these CMs are often designed for students, and the features of CMs that are supportive of student learning are not sufficiently explained. Extant studies indicate that teachers struggle to identify these features in CMs or reject certain features of CMs. Therefore, we developed a teaching and learning sequence (TLS) for teacher education programs to support preservice physics teachers in analyzing CMs. We designed a tool that provides a scheme for systematically analyzing CMs and investigated if this tool is suitable for supporting preservice physics teachers in analyzing CMs. We implemented the TLS in a bachelor seminar (N = 8) of our teacher education program, conducted short, guided interviews as well as problem-centered interviews, and collected several learning products. The tool helps preservice teachers to discover a broader range of features of CMs; however, they struggle to argue the role of these features in facilitating student learning. Further, we discuss the refinement of the tool and provide design conjectures for the development of a similar TLS.

Keywords

• curriculum materials
• teacher education
• design-based research