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Western Washington University and ETS are collaborating to develop resources to support the development of elementary teachers’ content knowledge for teaching (CKT) about matter. Use the menu options above to learn more about our project and how teacher educators can access our CKT tools, including assessment and instructional materials for FREE.
Learning about matter serves as an important and critical foundation for understanding many other scientific ideas. Understanding what matter is, forms in which it exists, properties of matter, and conservation of matter in the elementary grades supports students in being able to explain a variety of phenomena including melting and freezing, as well as larger processes such as the water cycle. However, despite its importance as a foundation to science learning, the concept of matter is both complex to teach and difficult to learn (Talanquer, 2009; Tsarpalis & Sevian, 2013). Furthermore, the Next Generation Science Standards represent a fundamental shift in how matter is taught at the elementary level. In particular, addressing the idea that “matter exists as particles that are too small to see” (rather than identifying specific particles such as atoms) at the elementary level places new demands on elementary teachers to determine how and when to develop students’ understanding of this matter concept to explain real-world phenomena.
Our project is contributing to addressing this challenge in several ways. First is equipping teacher educators with the knowledge, tools, and resources they need to prepare elementary teachers with robust content knowledge for teaching about matter required to meet the vision of the NGSS. We have developed instructional materials that are intended to support both preservice teachers' and teacher educators' learning. Second, supporting the development of teachers’ CKT for matter also requires assessments that can be used to understand and measure growth in their CKT. We have also developed a valid and reliable instrument to measure the impact of professional development programs and instructional materials developed for use in teacher education.
