StarrMatica Learning Systems, Inc. — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase II: 8.6

Description

A highly effective teacher in elementary school is essentialto a student's future success in STEM fields—yet many rural elementary teachers report feelingunprepared and uncomfortable teaching science. Research shows they often lack adequatecontent knowledge and have low confidence in their science instruction. The new demands setby the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) compound these issues as their studentperformance expectations are set high and integrate three dimensions of learning.They aremuch different from previous science standards that were mere statements of knowledge.Research has specifically documented the vast gap between the way science is currently taughtand the strategies promoted by the NGSS. Research shows that extensive and effectiveprofessional development (PD) is required to successfully implement the NGSS.Unfortunatelyrural schools have limited PD opportunities because of financial and geographic limitations.Based on StarrMatica's Phase I R&D proof-of-concept success the Phase II SBIR developmentof StarrMatica NextGen Science (SNGS) is expected to provide a unique comprehensive onlinePD solution for implementing NGSS in rural districts on tight curriculum budgets and withlimited PD time. This innovative framework is a "virtual science coach" designed to improve K- 5 science teacher pedagogy and to facilitate effective NGSS lesson development regardless of ateacher's previous training experience or curriculum materials. The Phase I goal was to showSNGS framework feasibility for more-effectively supporting a teacher's ability to create high- quality supplemental science lessons.We met/exceeded each Phase I objective by showing thatelementary teachers could create a high-quality lesson with supplementary materials in much lesstime and with greater NGSS alignment than a lesson created with their own methods/materials.Phase I research also revealed that even though teachers were able to develop lessons with SNGSthat were fully aligned to the NGSS their instruction during those lessons was only slightlybetter-aligned with the methods the NGSS require. Thus this 2-year Phase II project will befocused on further developing our platform. It will include research-based PD to improve scienceinstruction via 1) Videos texts and quizzes to improve questioning strategies and NGSSknowledge; 2) 72 informational texts to improve science content knowledge for each K-5 NGSSPerformance Expectation (PE); and 3) 72 lesson-planning templates organized by the 5E's withexamples and exemplars for each PE.In Year 1 six teachers will participate in a softwareevaluation usability study. In Year 2 data will be gathered from 27 teachers in a validation studyto demonstrate a teacher's a) improved NGSS understanding b) increased science contentknowledge c) improved questioning strategies to support inquiry-based learning and d)increased confidence in teaching NGSS-aligned science.Data will be collected via video-lessonobservations interviews surveys and quizzes before and after use of the framework and will beanalyzed and compared to determine change or gain in scores to evaluate Phase II success.Anticipated results and potential commercial applications: SNGS is expected to help ruralelementary teachers meet the NGSS by a) addressing the key problems they face with scienceinstruction; b) overcoming the cost/geographic limitations of PD; c) facilitating the instructionalshift teachers must make to meet the NGSS by improving teacher science pedagogy; d)providing comprehensive content that supports lesson development for every K-5 NGSS PE; ande) being comprised of research-based proven components. Our initial target market will be K-5school districts in the 20 NGSS-adopting states as they are expected to be seekingimplementation assistance at the administrative level.