Impacts of a Practice-Based Professional Development Program on Elementary Teachers’ Facilitation of and Student Engagement With Scientific Argumentation

By Jonathan Osborne, Hilda Borko, Evan J. Fishman, Florencia Gómez Zaccarelli, Eric Berson, K. Busch, E. Reigh, Anita Tseng. The American Educational Research Journal, 2019

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This article reports an investigation of a professional development program to enhance elementary teachers’ ability to engage their students in argument from evidence in science. Using a quasi-experimental approach, three versions were compared: Version A—a 1-week summer institute with a 2-week summer practicum experience and 8 follow-up days (four per year), Version B without the practicum experience, and Version C—a revision of Version A in Year 3. All teachers were videoed twice each year, and the videos were rated using an instrument to measure the quality of discourse. All versions led to a significant improvement in teachers’ facilitation of classroom discourse. Neither the practicum nor the revised program had an additional effect. Implications for the field are discussed.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education

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