21st Century Skills of Junior High School Science Teachers: A Training Needs Assesment

Classroom teachers need to be familiar with 21st century skills and integrate them throughout the curriculum as these directly impact teaching and learning. This study assessed the 21st century skills of Junior High School Science teachers of Cotabato City Division as a form of training needs assessment for professional development. This study also answered the level of proficiency of the respondents in terms of Learning and Innovation Skills, information, media and technology skills, and career and life skills. This study used descriptive quantitative approach using a questionnaire adapted from framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21). The analysis and interpretation used descriptive and inferential statistics. The Learning and Innovation Skills got the lowest grand mean, while the information, media and technology got the highest grand mean. There is no statistically significant difference between the mean ratings of the proficiency of the skills of the teachers and the administrators. This study concludes that the Junior High School Science teachers of Cotabato City Division have highly practiced/ applied 21st Century Skills. The means revealed that the respondents are most proficient information, media and technology skills and are less proficient in Learning and Innovation Skills.

Supporting science teaching practice with learning progressions

Learning progressions are often used as foundations for curriculum and assessment. At the same time, as representations of the development of student ideas and practices, they can also serve as maps to support teachers during instruction. This paper describes a program of research in which my colleagues and I have investigated how learning progressions can support high school science teachers in cycles of co-designing formative assessments.

Exploring the Teacher Behaviors that Influence High School Student’s Class Participation in the UAE

Teachers are entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring teaching and learning takes place in the classroom; several challenges exist, however, that influence the degree to which teachers may find success in teaching and learning. This phenomenological case-study explored the perceptions of six high school science teachers concerning the teacher behaviors that influence high school student’s classroom participation within the Emirati private educational system. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with purposefully sampled participants; data was analyzed via content analysis, which employed utilized multiple stages of coding: open, axial, and thematic. The findings of this research resulted in three main themes: (1) Teachers who model positive behaviors increase student’s classroom participation; (2) An empathetic understanding of teachers-needs would lead to more effective teacher support; and (3) Field experience coupled with effective support facilitates positive perceptions of student-teacher relationship. The findings of this research indicate a strong need for active teacher-coaching and teacher-mentoring, rather than passive, primarily rote, teacher training programs that are common in schools as the primary form of professional development. It also demonstrates the need for school leaders and teachers to foster meaningful, positive relationships with students so as to improve performance. This research paper further contributes to closing the literature gap on Student-Teacher (S-T) relationships by providing new knowledge concerning the lived-experiences of high school science teachers in fostering meaningful S-T relationships.

Designing Feedback Systems: Examining a Feedback Approach to Facilitation in an Online Asynchronous Professional Development Course for High School Science Teachers

Many researchers have identified the need for a more holistic understanding of the role of feedback in supporting learning in online environments. This study explores how our design, development, and implementation of an online feedback facilitation system influenced high school science teachers’ learning in an asynchronous teacher professional development online course. We then describe teachers’ and facilitators’, i.e., feedback providers’, perceptions of the effectiveness of the system’s features for supporting participants’ learning and engagement. Our work also responds to recent calls for developing a more nuanced understanding of how the complexity of feedback influences learning and the need for more qualitative research on online facilitators’ and learners’ experiences working with new technologies. Results demonstrated that, despite the difficulty of analyzing the complex variables influencing learners’ interactions and perceptions of the feedback system, designing adaptive feedback systems that draw on the principles of design-based implementation research (DBIR) offer promise for enhancing the systems’ contributions to teacher learning.

The Relationship Between U.S. High School Science Teacher’s Self-Efficacy, Professional Development, and Use of Technology in Classrooms

There have been a limited number studies that examined the relationship between professional development (PD) and self-efficacy with technology tool use, specifically concerning high school science teachers. The main goal of this quantitative study was to identify any specific correlations between science teacher self-efficacy and the professional development science teachers received for those specific classroom technologies. Participants were comprised of a randomized sample set of high school science teachers throughout 46 different US States.The data was collected by using an online survey via the Qualtrics survey platform. The survey was sent to 3000 science instructors and 104 in total completed it. The results suggest that science teachers’ efficacy was high with course management systems and student wireless or digital devices, but not for social networking/media. There was no significant connection between technological self-efficacy and PD for related technology tools. However, it is possible that science teachers are already highly efficacious in terms of technology, and observational studies are recommended to see when and how teachers actually use technology in their classrooms.