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The team

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving physics education via the development of an assessment to evaluate physics educator preparation programs. In particular, we will develop an assessment to measure a teacher’s ability to accurately interpret and productively respond to students’ ideas. This project is part of the IUSE Level 1 Engaged Student Learning track. The assessment tool we will develop meets a critical need for common measures of STEM-educator preparation programs. Such an assessment tool can guide the improvement of individual STEM-teacher education programs and allow for reliable comparisons across programs to point the field towards the most promising approaches. In addition, the research required for the development of our assessment tool will further refine the construct of teacher attentiveness in physics, exploring the development and interaction of core content knowledge and core pedagogical content knowledge among preservice teachers. 

Our multi-phased development of assessment items for attentiveness in physics is modeled after the Mathematical Attentiveness in Pedagogical Practice item-development process, which gathers authentic responses from both students and educators in the development of a selected-response assessment. The distinct phases of item development describe our efforts to engage physics educators in the cognitive processes needed for attentiveness: (1) identifying the pedagogical intent and key disciplinary concept(s) of a specific student task; (2) making evidence-based inferences about a student’s understanding of the disciplinary concept being targeted; and (3) deciding on an appropriate pedagogical response that builds both on an individual student’s thinking and toward the disciplinary intent of the task. The authentic student and educator responses used during this development process will help us and other education programs to efficiently measure physics educators’ attentiveness. This work will support the identification of successful physics educator preparation programs, which then allows for a better understanding of key elements of physics teacher preparation, and allows for continued theoretical work on the construct of attentiveness in physics education.  The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. 

Get in touch : leslieatkins@boisestate.edu