understanding pedagogical design capacity through teachers’ narratives

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Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 797e810

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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Understanding pedagogical design capacity through teachers’ narratives

Elizabeth A. Davis a,*, Carrie Beyer a, Cory T. Forbes b, Shawn Stevens a

a School of Education, 610 E. University Ave, School of Education Building, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1259, USAb Teaching and Learning, N252 Lindquist Center, College of Education, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 27 February 2009Received in revised form18 December 2010Accepted 10 January 2011

Keywords:Elementary school teachersElementary scienceCurriculum materialsEducative curriculum materials

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 734 647 0594.E-mail address: [email protected] (E.A. Davis).

0742-051X/$ e see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.tate.2011.01.005

a b s t r a c t

Teachers need to develop the ability to adapt curriculum materials. Two elementary teachers, Maggieand Catie, were asked to write narratives about their use of and changes to particular reform-orientedscience lesson plans. Maggie drew on her knowledge of and experiences with students, as well as otherknowledge, experiences, and resources, to make productive changes to account for her students’ priorknowledge and abilities. Catie based her curricular adaptations on her learning goalsdbut these were notaligned with the learning goals of the curriculum materials. The paper discusses implications for teachereducation, professional development, and educative curriculum materials.

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1. Introduction

Curriculum materials play a central role in guiding teachers’practice (Remillard, 2005) especially for newer teachers (Grossman& Thompson, 2004). Scholars worldwide have explored teachers’beliefs about and use of curriculum materials and textbooks (e.g.,Harrison, 2001; Li, Capraro, & Capraro, 2009; Lloyd, 1999; Shkedi,1998; Wang, 2004). For example, Israeli teachers recognizedthe strengths and limitations of different curriculum materialsregarding the clarity of the pedagogical approach recommended, onthe one hand, and the affordances for teacher autonomy, on theother (Shkedi,1998). Teachers need to analyze and adapt even high-quality, reform-oriented curriculum materials to better supporttheir own students’ learning (Barab & Luehmann, 2003;Baumgartner, 2004; Davis, 2006). Adaptations can include inser-tions, deletions, or substitutions, for example, and may be based onaspects of the teachers’ contexts, their students’ needs andstrengths, and their learning goals, knowledge, beliefs, identities,and orientations (Drake & Sherin, 2006; Forbes & Davis, 2010c;Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998; Pintó, 2005; Remillard & Bryans, 2004;Valencia, Place, Martin, & Grossman, 2006). For instance, Canadianteachers adapted curriculum materials to increase relevance tostudents and, occasionally, to gain insight into student thinking(Nicol & Crespo, 2006). A teacher’s ability to employ personalresources as well as resources embedded in the materials them-selves to make productive changes to curriculum materials is

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referred to as the teacher’s pedagogical design capacity (Brown,2009). Some teachers make productive changes to curriculummaterials that support and enhance the intent of thematerialswhileother teachersdfor example, those who do not deeply understandthe rationales behind reforms promoted in materialsdmakeunproductive changes or fail to make changes to the materials thatwould benefit their students (Collopy, 2003; Pintó, 2005; Remillard,1999; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002; Schwarz et al., 2008).

Elementary teachers face enormous challenges in teachingscience. These challenges are associated with the very high numberof subjects they are responsible for (including all disciplines withinthe broader field of science), their typically limited science subjectmatter knowledge (Abell, 2007; Anderson &Mitchener,1994; Davis,Petish, & Smithey, 2006) and understanding of scientific inquiry(e.g., Bryan, 2003), their typically lowconfidence in teaching science(Cochran & Jones, 1998), their often limited access to scienceequipment and resources (e.g., Peers, Diezmann, & Watters, 2003),and the limited amount of instructional time dedicated to science inelementary schools in the US (Marx & Harris, 2006; Morton &Dalton, 2007) and elsewhere (e.g., Appleton, 2007; Gustafson,Guilbert, & MacDonald, 2002). (Of note is the fact that even in pla-ces where science is a “core subject” in a national curriculum, it istaught far less than literacy and numeracy in elementary class-rooms; Fensham, 2008.) Indeed, many of these challenges affectelementary science teachers worldwide (see the 2007 TIMSS report[Martin et al., 2008] for a study of trends across approximately 60nations). A recent report sponsored by UNESCO synthesizes some ofthese challenges to make recommendations (Fensham, 2008),identifying elementary science teaching and learning as one of thekey issues facing educators across the globe.

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Because of these and other challenges, elementary teachers maydepend heavily on curriculum materials in science, yet at the sametime, they may be more likely to adapt reform-oriented curriculummaterials in a way that moves away from the curriculum devel-opers’ intent. In the US, with no national curriculum or curricularprograms, the changes may be more prevalent than elsewhere. Butelsewhere, too, teachers make changes to the curriculum materialsthey use. For example, lesson study in Japan explores how teachersjointly construct lessons to use in the context of the nationalcurriculum, which lays out the educational goals (Lewis & Tsuchida,1998; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999), and a project spanning four Euro-pean countries saw extensive occurrence of teachers transformingcurricula despite wide variation across Europe in terms of thecentralization of the curriculum and the expectations for teacheradherence to a curriculum and set of teaching methods (see Pintó,2005). Therefore, it is important to understand how teachers adapttheir curriculum materials and how they can be supported inadapting for their students while maintaining the reform goals ofthe materials.

Educative curriculummaterials are designedwith the intention ofpromoting teacher learning as well as student learning. Researchersand curriculum developers hypothesize, and some empiricalresearch suggests, that educative curriculummaterials can promoteteachers’ learning, pedagogical design capacity, and identity devel-opment (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Beyer & Davis, 2009a; Brown, 2009;Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Forbes & Davis, 2008; Schneider & Krajcik,2002). For example, educative science curriculum materials canincorporate suggestions for making lessons more or less student-directed (Davis, Smithey, & Petish, 2004), thus supporting teachersin making productive changes. Situating these supports withinspecific lessons through teacher accounts about the lesson may beespecially useful, since teacher learning is so grounded in practice(Putnam & Borko, 2000). Preservice elementary teachers who usedsuch grounded features within educative curriculum materialsattended to issues like students’ ideas (Dietz & Davis, 2009), andadopted specific instructional ideas described in the accounts (Beyer& Davis, 2009b). We call such features narratives.

By narrative, we mean a short account of a lessondfor example,describing what a teacher and his or her students did, what deci-sions the teacher made, and what went into those decisions. Whilelacking the complexity of true cases, narratives such as theseincorporate some of the strengths of cases (e.g., Barnett, 1998;Lundeberg, Levin, & Harrington, 1999), and can be situated ina similar conceptual space. A case presents a real teaching experi-ence in depth to illustrate the complexity of teaching and providean example on which to reflect (Doyle, 1993; Kleinfeld, 1998;Shulman, 1992). Stories of people can help to promote the devel-opment of pedagogical content knowledge (Davis, Lee, Vye,Bransford, & Schwartz, 2006). Cases situated in classrooms canprovide some context while minimizing the distractions of theunpredictable real-time classroom experience (Kleinfeld, 1998;Putnam & Borko, 2000).

To be clear, the study did not employ narrative inquiry asa research methodology (see, e.g., Clandinin, Pushor, & Murray Orr,2007; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). This study aimed to exploreteachers’ adaptations to curriculum materials and to characterizewith some specificity their pedagogical design capacity, but wewere not attempting to more richly characterize the teachers’ livedexperiences across time, personal and social conditions, and place,as one might in narrative inquiry. Thus we use “narrative” here ina less technical sense; “vignette”, “account”, or “description andanalysis” might also be used. It is also important to note that theteachers themselves wrote the narratives, not the researchers.

As curriculum designers, we hope that narratives such as thosedescribed below achieve four key goals. We hope the narratives,

each of which highlights a particular topic (e.g., on building onstudents’ ideas), will help teachers to learn about those topics.Since the narratives are grounded in curriculum materials in thisstudy, we hope the narratives help teachers envision how a partic-ular lessonmight go. We hope theymake visible teachers’ decision-making, helping to make the usually tacit teacher knowledgeexplicit, much as cases can do (e.g., Merseth, 1996). Finally, we hopesuch narratives support the development of novice teachers’professional vision, or the ability to seewhatmatters in a classroom(cf. Goodwin, 1994; Sherin & van Es, 2009).

This study rests on the assumption that teachers are themselvescurriculum designers (Ben-Peretz, 1990; Clandinin & Connelly,1991; Remillard, 2005). Because teachers have localized knowl-edge of their students, curricular goals, and affordances andconstraints of their particular professional contexts (Hiebert,Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002; Shulman, 1986), they can provideunique, on-the-ground insight into the enactment of specificcurriculummaterials. Teachers’ input can be a key component of theiterative development of innovative, inquiry-based curriculummaterials (e.g., Fishman, Marx, Best, & Tal, 2003), and their experi-encesdincorporated into educative curriculum materialsdmightalso support other teachers’ use of the curriculummaterials. If thereis a benefit to teachers of incorporating situated, authentic accountsof how other teachers use and modify lesson plans into the curric-ulummaterials themselves, howcould such accounts be generated?Since previous research has shown that teachers’ curricular adap-tations reflect their own orientations and those of the curriculummaterials (Collopy, 2003; Remillard, 1999; Remillard & Bryans,2004), would the changes they describe likely be productive? Orcounter-productive?

To explore these questions, and to gain insight into elementaryteachers’ pedagogical design capacity, we engaged two elementaryteachers in writing narratives describing how they used andadapted curriculum materials, with the explicit intent of incorpo-rating their narratives into our educative curriculum materials. Wehoped to benefit pragmatically from their expertise and to developan improved theoretical understanding of teachers’ curricularadaptations, as well as to provide a professional development andleadership experience for the teachers at the same time (see, e.g.,Mouza & Wong, 2009). A small-scale study such as this cannot begeneralized to all teachers, but can help to inform theory. Thus, ourresearch questions ask, What kinds of curricular adaptations dothese two case study teachers describe? On what knowledge,experiences, and resources do they draw in making decisions aboutcurricular adaptations? The intention is not to measure theteachers’ fidelity to the curriculum materials, but to characterizewhat changes they make and why. We also explored the benefit tothe teachers of writing these narratives, since such reflection can beof benefit (e.g., Drake, 2006; Kooy, 2006; Luehmann, 2008); ques-tions related to that focus are explored elsewhere (Davis, Beyer,Forbes & Stevens, 2007).

2. Methods

Two teachers, who we refer to as Maggie and Catie, provideillustrative and contrastive cases. We explore how Maggie con-nected her changes to a science unit to her knowledge of herstudents, and how Catie connected her changes to her learninggoals for her students.

2.1. Participants

Maggie and Catie participated in our larger longitudinal studyfollowing their experiences as beginning (and, over time, moreexperienced) elementary teachers (e.g., see Beyer & Davis, 2008;

E.A. Davis et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 797e810 799

Davis, 2008; Forbes & Davis, 2010a, 2010b; Stevens & Davis, 2007).Each graduated from the same teacher preparation program in theMidwestern United States, although they graduated in differentyears. Each took a version of an elementary science methods coursetaught by the first author.

Maggie started teaching in January 2000 and was the mostexperienced teacher in our longitudinal study. Our intensivelongitudinal data collection with Maggie started in Fall 2002.During that school year and the following one, Maggie taughtfourth grade at a private Catholic school in a suburb of a large city inthe Midwest; her previous teaching experiences had included onesemester in an urban district and two years at a different suburbanCatholic school. When Maggie was in her fifth full year of teaching,she moved to a very large, ethnically and culturally diverse, urbanschool district, where she still teaches third grade. Maggie wasworking on a master’s degree in special education and hers was aninclusion classroom. Maggie was viewed as a language arts expertin her school, and at the time of this study was leading a profes-sional development experience in a math curriculum for otherteachers at her school, as well.

Catie began teaching in Fall 2002. Catie spent her first yearteaching sixth grade at a Catholic school in a suburb outside amajorMidwestern city. Subsequently, she taught second grade ata different Catholic school in a suburb nearby. Her school wasmostly white and was relatively homogeneous with regard tosocioeconomic status. Catie typically had approximately 30 second-graders in her classroom. Catie was pursuing a master’s degree inscience education and seemed to self-identify as a science teacher,not (solely) a generalist.

2.2. CASES educative curriculum materials

As a part of their work with us in our longitudinal study, theteachers taught at least one of our educative, inquiry-orientedscience units each year from our CASES website. CASES (http://cases.soe.umich.edu/) is a technology-mediated learning environ-ment intended to support preservice and new elementary teachers’

Table 1Summary of lessons in CASES weather unit for grades 3e5 and plants unit, grades K-2.

Unit and lesson name Summary of l

Weather Unit, Grades 3e5Lesson 1: Establishing Daily Weather Observations

(“Weather Observations”)The teacher hobservations

Lesson 2: What Causes the Wind? (“Wind”) Students obseLesson 3: Where Do Puddles Go? (“Puddles”) Students inve

a paper plateLesson 4: Cloud Formation Students crea

condensationLesson 5: What Causes the Seasons? ("Seasons") Students exp

represent the

Plants Unit, Grades K-2Lesson 1: Finding Seeds in Fruits (“Finding Seeds”) Students inveLesson 2: Grouping Seeds Students comLesson 3: Looking at How Seeds Move (“How Seeds Move”) Students inve

of plants’ offsLesson 4: Observing Seed Parts (“Seed Parts”) Students obseLesson 5: Do Plants Need Sunlight? Students expl

Each group ofthe plants ovpreparation f

Lesson 6: Asking Questions About Plants Students askthey design.

Lesson 7: Investigating Plants Students desiprevious lessolearned abou

Lesson 8: Field Trip Students prepThey visit a fa

learning with regard to inquiry-oriented science teaching (NRC,2000, 2007). The CASES materials emphasize three essentialfeatures of inquirydasking and answering scientific questions,constructing evidence-based explanations, and communicatingand justifying findingsdbuilding on the National Research Coun-cil’s characterization of inquiry (NRC, 2000) and calls for reform(NRC, 2007). Some unitsdlike the weather unit with which Maggieworkeddhave relatively uniform emphasis on all three of theseessential features. Other units emphasize one inquiry practice inparticular; in the plants unit with which Catie worked, theemphasis is on evidence-based explanations, instantiated here assupporting claims with evidence. Table 1 summarizes the lessonswithin these units.

CASES and its curriculum materials incorporate educativeelements such as supports for how and why one might engage ininquiry-oriented science teaching practices, guidance regardingstudents’ ideas, science background knowledge, and a reflectivejournal space (Davis et al., 2004). Most relevant here are the narra-tive images of inquiry, one typeof educative element inCASES. Thesenarratives involve stories about fictionaldand, as a result of theproject described in this paper, also realdpreservice and newteachers (Dietz & Davis, 2009; Smithey & Davis 2004). CASESprovides a brief profile for each of the Image teachers. Figs. 1 and 2show the profiles that Maggie and Catie wrote about themselves.

Each CASES lesson includes short narratives about one, two, orthree of these Image teachers. Each narrative describes how theImage teacher adapted the lesson to address a particular issue. Thenarrative images describe real challenges new elementary teachersface, such as anticipating students’ ideas (Smith & Neale, 1989)or understanding the science content themselves (Anderson &Mitchener, 1994). Maggie chose to focus on making modificationsto lesson plans in relation to her students and their ideas andexperiences, and Catie chose to focus on supporting her students inand through organization, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. A narrativeimage from a fictional image teacher called Peg and an examplefrom Catie for the same lesson are provided in Fig. 3. A narrativeimage from Maggie is provided in Fig. 4.

esson

elps students establish what data they will collect during daily weatherthroughout the unit.rve and explore wind and air and conduct an investigation about wind formation.stigate what happens to puddles by observing evaporation that takes place inand measuring the remaining water.te a model of a cloud in its early stages of its formation, demonstratingusing salt as condensation nuclei.lore how the sun and the earth interact to cause seasons, using a light source tosun and a Styrofoam ball to represent the earth.

stigate where seeds are located in plants.pare and contrast seeds from different kinds of plants.stigate different methods of seed dispersal and their importance to the survivalpring. Students observe the features of different seeds.rve the parts of a seed and discuss the parts of the seed that enable germination.ore the importance of the sun for a plant’s survival by conducting an investigation.students covers parts of plants’ leaves with black construction paper and observeser several days. This lesson serves to model the process of investigation inor the next lessons.questions about plants that they will later answer through an investigation that

gn and conduct an investigation to answer a question the class raised during then. Students share the results of their investigation as well as what they have

t plants and about how to design and conduct a scientific investigation.are questions they have about the journey of plants from a farm to consumers.rm or grocery store to have their questions answered.

Fig. 1. Maggie’s profile on CASES.


2.3. Engaging teachers in writing narrative images of inquiry

Maggie and Catie agreed to write narratives describing their useof lessons within CASES units. We told them that the narrativesthey wrote would be incorporated into our educative curriculummaterials, which they knew were intended to support noviceelementary teachers. The experience took about 8e12 weeksduring summer 2006.

We engaged the teachers in phone interviews and online workusing a discussion space built into CASES. The interviews and onlinework were designed to support the teachers in selecting a focus fortheir narratives, refining that focus, exploring ways of relating thefocus to the lesson plans, and drafting and refining the narrativesthemselves. The focus was important since each narrative, asdescribed above, is intended to help teachers learn about keyinstructional ideas. The teachers responded to questions we asked,either in the interviews or online, and were able to refer to theirwritten responses as they drafted their images. In addition, theyposted drafts of the narratives in the online space. We kept track ofeach version of the narratives and connected these to their writtenreflections in the online discussion space.

Each teacher was interviewed four times via phone, with threeof the interviews conducted individually and one conductedcollectively. The first author conducted all of the interviews. Duringthe first individual interview, the teachers described the factorsmotivating them to participate in the project, their ideas concern-ing the theme they might use for writing their images, theirexperiences with teaching the unit that they had chosen, and theirideas for what they might include in their teacher profile. Thesecond individual interview asked the teachers to describe theirideas about how to refine each lesson in the unit with regard totheir theme and why they thought their refinements might beproductive (including a discussion of advantages and disadvantagesof the changes) as well as how they had come up with their ideas.Since the narratives were intended to provide accounts of these

Fig. 2. Catie’s profi

teachers’ real-world experiences with the lesson and to make theirdecision-making visible to other teachers, uncovering these expe-riences and rationales was important to us. During the combinedinterview, serving a mainly social purpose, the teachers wereintroduced to one another via a three-way telephone conversation,and each described her teaching context as well as her focus for hernarratives. The final individual interview (referred to as interview#4) asked teachers to describe any benefits they perceived fromtheir experience in writing the images and factors impacting theirthinking.

The teachers received prompts once via email and three timesvia the online discussion space to facilitate their thinking abouthow to draft their images. The initial email asked the teachers toexplain the key terms and big ideas related to their theme for theirimages. Subsequently, on the online discussion space the teachersdrafted a profile of themselves that described their teaching back-ground, context, and their theme. They also responded to promptsabout their previous experiences in teaching the unit for whichthey would be writing images. Another set of online prompts thenassisted the teachers in narrowing their ideas about the specificissue or idea they would address in each lesson related to theirtheme. Finally, the teachers received guidelines for how to drafttheir initial set of images. Once the teachers posted an initial set ofimages online, they iteratively revised their drafts and providedelaboration about their thinking, following frequent feedback fromthe first author and the other teacher participant.

2.4. Data sources and analysis

Thus, our data sources for this study include four interviewswitheach teacher, their written responses to the questions posed online,their self-generated profile describing themselves as teachers, thedrafts of their images, their comments on and response to oneanother’s images, a journal entry written at the end of the processresponding to questions about the theme the teachers selected, and

le on CASES.

Fig. 3. Two sample images of inquiry on CASES, from Catie and fictional teacher Peg.


email exchanged during the process. We draw most heavily on theindividual interview data and the images the teachers developed, aswell as the text they wrote in the online discussion space (i.e.,responses to questions, profiles, drafts, and comments on drafts).Table 2 summarizes, chronologically for each teacher, the timing for

Fig. 4. Sample image of inquir

the most central data sources and other key milestones for thestudy. These data sources are supplemented by extensive datadinterviews, system logs, written reflections, email exchanges, andsome classroom observationsefrom our longitudinal study, usedmainly in looking for confirming and disconfirming evidence.

y from Maggie on CASES.

Table 2Summary of data collection points and milestones.

Data collection point or milestone Maggie Catie

Initial email correspondence week 1 weeks 1e2Interview #1 week 2 week 2Interview #2 week 3 week 3Joint interview (limited use as data) week 3 week 3Drafting and refining profile weeks 4 and 5 weeks 3 and 4Drafting Narratives for Lesson 1 weeks 2e5 weeks 2e6Drafting Narratives for Lesson 2 weeks 3e6 weeks 2e5Drafting Narratives for Lesson 3 weeks 3e6 weeks 2e6Drafting Narratives for Lesson 4 weeks 3e6 weeks 2e6Drafting Narratives for Lesson 5 weeks 3e6 weeks 3e6Drafting Narratives for Lesson 6 n/a weeks 3e6Drafting Narratives for Lesson 7 n/a weeks 3e6Drafting Narratives for Lesson 8 n/a weeks 3e6Concluding journal (limited use as data) week 7 week 10Interview #4 week 8 week 12


We developed analytic questions to guide our coding andanalysis of these data. These questions guided the design ofour coding schemes, which were developed primarily throughopen coding informed by other work exploring curricular changes(e.g., Drake & Sherin, 2006). These coding schemes incorporatedescriptors of the curricular adaptations themselves (see Table 3)and the basis for the curricular adaptations (see Table 4).

After coding the data and compiling and synthesizing the codes,we developed preliminary cases to describe each teacher. We thenengaged in an iterative process moving between the data and thecase to refine the claims made in each case.

3. Results

To answer our research questions, we present results related tothe foci of the teachers’ images, what kinds of curricular adapta-tions theymade to the CASES lessons, and onwhat they based thosecurricular adaptations. We turn first to Maggie’s case.

3.1. Maggie’s pedagogical design capacity: attendingto students at every turn

Maggie chose to focus her images on the theme of modificationto account for her students. In an email, as she was narrowing in ona choice for a focus, Maggie wrote:

I might think something about modification for age levels orability levels. Teaching weather to 4th grade was much different

Table 3Coding scheme for description of curricular adaptations.

Coding Descriptor and Definition

Change (general): Teacher makes a general change to the lesson, not characterizedby one of the more specific codes

Add, remove, or change investigation or hands-on experience: Teacher adds a newhands-on activity, or removes one from the written lesson plan

Add, remove, or change text: Teacher reads a science tradebook, text, or relevant story,or excludes one recommended by the written lesson plan

Add, remove, or change in data-gathering and/or data-recording: Teacher changesthe approach used for data gathering or data recording

Add, remove, or change scaffolding: Teacher provides additional support for studentsor provides less support than recommended in the written plan

Add, remove, or change discussion: Teacher adds a new whole-class discussion,or removes or makes substantive change to existing discussion

Add, remove, or change worksheet: Teacher adds, removes, or changes a worksheet,in a way not specified by one of the more specific codes.

Add or remove entire lesson: Teacher adds a lesson not included in CASES unit,or removes a CASES lesson

Change in sequence: Teacher moves lessons within the CASES unit

than 3rd grade..or it might have been the economics of theschool [in the suburb I used to teach in] vs. [in the city I teach innow]. I could possible speak to integration of read alouds withlessons as I have tried to do farmore of that this year becausemykids lack somuch background knowledge. I could possible speakto issues with ELL. But I am not really sure specifically. I am inthe midst of teaching the weather unit now and I have had to doMAJOR modification with my kids. (email week 1)

This initial thinking of Maggie’s ended up being reflected inmuch of the work she did throughout this project. To exploreMaggie’s pedagogical design capacity around these ideas, weconsider the modifications she made to the lessons as well as thereasons behind her decisions.

3.1.1. Maggie’s curricular adaptationsIn adapting the CASES curriculum materials, Maggie changed

the approaches for data gathering and data recording, added texts,added new investigations or hands-on experiences, and added andremoved scaffolding.

As one example of howMaggie changed the approaches for datagathering and data recording, for the Weather Observations lesson,Maggie reduced the number of types of observations studentsmade (e.g., eliminating humidity) and changed the observations tobe qualitative rather than quantitative. She said she made thesechanges to the data gathering in part to help her students becomebetter observersdto notice what theworld around them is like (int.#1; int. #2; online disc. post week 2, “Lesson 1: Establishing DailyWeather Observations”). In discussing her changes to this lesson,Maggie commented on the importance of understanding herstudents, as illustrated in her discussion of changes she made toa worksheet:

I think thatmymodificationherewentmainly to the formatof theobservations that they were doing and the information that theywere collecting and I think that that has a lot to dowith knowingyour kids and their background knowledge. . Um, becauselooking at the sheet that was up there before I noticed that someof the, the information they were asking the kids to collectjust wouldn’t mean a whole lot . to my students. . (int. #2)

For the Wind lesson, Maggie added an unusual read-aloud text.The book included descriptions of small investigations studentscould do themselves, and Maggie stopped the reading each timethey reached an investigation, and engaged the class in the inves-tigation. In this way she incorporated informational text into thelesson, but also additional hands-on experiences. She said she

Example

Make a bulletin board

Addition of a lesson involving makingand using a barometerAddition of a book by Vicki Cobb

Removal of "humidity" as a measurementto recordInclusion of examples of instances in whichclarity or drawing mattersAddition of discussion of an unusual weather event

Substitution of a "foldable" in place of a worksheet

Removal of CASES "sock walk" to pick up seeds

Shifting evaporation lesson

Table 4Coding scheme for description of basis of curricular adaptations.

Coding descriptor and definition Example

Knowledge and beliefsPCK: Includes knowledge of student ideas, instructional representations, etc. Identification of "wind is caused by God" as child’s alternative ideaKnowledge of students: Knowledge regarding students as individuals, groups

of students, students’ knowledge level in general, students’ communityand family contexts, etc.

Recognition that most of one’s students’ families do not have computersat home

Subject matter knowledge: Knowledge of science content and inquiry Knowledge about air pressureGeneral pedagogical or educational knowledge: Knowledge of appropriate

instructional strategies, educational psychology, etc.Identification of "pre-teaching a difficult concept" as an instructionalstrategy to use

Knowledge of school context: Knowledge of contextual issues related to schooland schooling, such as knowledge of previous and future grades’ foci, collegialnorms, etc.

Understanding of what happens with regard to science instructionin previous grades

Curricular knowledge: Knowledge of what topics should be or are taught,scope and sequence, curriculum materials, etc.

Understanding of standards set by school for science outcomes

Learning goals: Teachers’ own learning goals for the students Careful observation as a skill to develop

ExperiencesCurrent teaching experiences: Experiences in current classroom teaching

current unitExperience this week with Puddles lesson

Previous teaching experiences: Experiences in previous classrooms, grades,and schools

Experience in suburban school

Coursework: Experiences related to previous coursework in education or sciencesubject matter

Experience in masters classes

Professional development experiences: Experiences with previous or currentprofessional development provided by school or sought on own

Attendance at a PD workshop for math curriculum

ResourcesCurriculum materials (in general): Lesson plans, unit plans, worksheets,

activities, etc.Lesson ideas from NSTA publication Science and Children

CASES: Lesson plans, unit plans, and other material in CASES Existing images of inquiry in CASESStudent texts: Science tradebooks, textbooks, fiction, etc. Vicki Cobb’s books blending informational text and investigationsTeacher texts: Texts intended for teachers Dinah Zikes’ books about foldablesColleagues: Opportunity to co-plan, get guidance from others, etc. Working with grade-level colleaguesTime: Time necessary to plan lessons, assess students, etc. Time for planningOther: Pragmatics or logistics: Materials, room set-up, scheduling, etc. Availability of equipment


made this change to build her students’ background knowledge(int. #2; online disc. post week 2, “Lesson 2: Wind”). She citedspecific alternative ideas that her students helddfor example, thattrees make wind or that wind is alive (int. #2). She thought theinformation in the text (and the small investigations) helpedstudents reconsider those ideas. However, she also expressedconcern throughout interview #2 about whether, by adding text tobuild that background knowledge, was she “giving them too much”(int. #2). For example, Maggie said:

I sometimes worry about giving them too much so that theinquiry part is kind of gone where, especially with that Windlesson I almost got to point, I was so worried about them notgetting it when we did the experiment, or coming up with allthese ideas . I. walk this line between wanting them to haveas much as knowledge as they need to understand it but notwanting to give it away. (int. #2)

For the CASES Seasons lesson plan, rather than adding a text,Maggie added multiple hands-on experiences in addition to theone suggested, to help her students develop a better understandingof the phenomenon. These additional hands-on experiencesincluded using Styrofoam balls, globes, and hands to represent theearth (int. #2).

Often Maggie made multiple types of changes to a single lesson.For example, for the lesson modeling the formation of clouds,Maggie changed the approaches for data gathering and datareporting, and she provided additional scaffolding for students’observations. She said that in previous years, only one or two smallgroups saw the desired phenomenon; she wanted to support herstudents this year in engaging in more effective observation (int.#2; online disc. post week 3, “Lesson 4: Cloud Formation”). Maggie

talked about how she would change the structure provided forstudents’ observations:

[I focused on] the use of including a graphic organizer or somekind of organizer to have them really . and it’s not likea worksheet, but it’s like, almost like a, like an experiment datacollection kind of thing where, you know in that lesson they’resupposed to be observing their, their cloud in the cup on theraised earth every 5 min (int. #2)

Here, she increased the amount of observation, changed thetype of observations, and provided scaffoldingdall toward the endof making the experiment more likely to contribute to students’learning. Maggie discussed benefits of these changes to herstudents and to herself:

I almost feel like they feel like they’re more like science studentswhen they get to write stuff down and keep track of what’shappening. And I also think it’s great for them, with theirobservations skills, because I can kind of assess as we go alongwho knows how to make a good observation and who’s stilltalking about what they think is happening even though it’s notwhat they see. (int. #2)

The changes Maggie described throughout the unit were inkeeping with the intentions of the curriculum developers, in thatthey continued to support students in engaging in inquiry-orientedscience and simply provided additional experiences and/or supportfor their investigation and sense-making. In addition, she oftenpointed out tradeoffs in the decisions she made. For example,Maggie acknowledged that by removing humidity from the set ofweather observations students make during the unit, she post-poned their encountering ideas about humidity until the portion of


the unit focused on the water cycledperhaps accounting for someof their difficulties in understanding water cycle concepts (int. #2).In sum, Maggie’s curricular adaptationsdeven ones she decidedwere not completely effectivedreflected a sophisticated interplaybetween the written lesson plans and her understanding of herstudents.

3.1.2. The basis for Maggie’s curricular adaptationsOn what knowledge, experiences, and resources did Maggie

draw as she made decisions about changes to make? Maggie drewextensively on her knowledge of and experiences with her currentand previous students, as well as her knowledge of their school andfamily contextsdall of which are related to the general notion ofknowing her students. Maggie also used her previous teaching andlearning experiences and CASES and other resources to guide herdecision-making. We discuss her reliance on her knowledge of herstudents first.

In our initial interview with Maggie, she compared her third-graders this year in the urban district with the fourth graders shetaught in a private, suburban school a previous year. When askedwhat, specifically, accounted for the differences between the twogroups of students, Maggie listed numerous factors:

. I think that that, like I said, it could either be the age or itcould just be . because science isn’t stressed until you’re infourth grade in [my city] so a lot of these kids didn’t, you knowwhen I asked themwhere they thought wind came from. Theyhad a lot of good suggestions, like some of the kids thought itcame from God or a man blowing up in the clouds. Everythingfrom that to at the other end the earth’s rotation and the earthspinning causes thewind, the air to movewhich causes wind..So, so when you have a range of thought in your classroom likethat, just likewhen you have, it’s almost like their reading levels,I have everything down from kids you are now reading at a firstgrade level all theway up to kids who are reading in high school,you know high school in comprehension level so. (int. #1)

Here as well as elsewhere in the data (e.g., multiple times duringint. #2), Maggie acknowledged the difference in age and generalsetting (i.e., urban versus suburban), but also noted additionalfactors: science is not stressed until fourth grade in her school, manyof her current students are English language learners, and herstudents exhibit a verywide range of reading levels. She talked abouthow her students’ family context affects what scientific data shedecides to have themcollect; she said, for example, that sincemost ofher students do not have computers or internet access at home, shecannot expect them to collect daily temperature data usingcomputers, as she used to in the suburban setting (int. #1; int. #2).

Maggie also emphasized her learning goals for her students,related to both content and inquiry goals. For example, she wantedher students to develop observation skills (e.g., int. #1) andunderstand the difference between an observation and a hypoth-esis (e.g., int. #2). She stressed conceptual understanding repeat-edly, and saw the connection between the inquiry goals she had forstudents and the development of their conceptual understanding.For example, she noted that her students had not been asked “why”in previous grades. But, Maggie said, her class focused extensivelyon saying “why” and providing evidence for one’s thinking (int. #2).Maggie said:

[My] kids have, know that about me that they’ve gotten to thepoint where they’re like ’and do we need to write why?’ I’m like’do you even need to ask? . You know of course you have towrite why. You do it in math, you do it in reading. We do it allover.’ They have to provide evidence for what they’re saying.(int. #2)

Although the unit incorporated a fairly even focus across theinquiry practices, Maggie herself emphasized (among other things)the role of using evidence to support claims.

Maggie also had a rich set of teaching experiences and she drewon these extensively in planning and enacting her instruction. Forexample, she talked about having developed an integrated weatherunit for one of her masters in special education courses (int. #1).More significantly, she regularly drew on her previous teachingexperiences. For example, when describing the changes she wouldmake to the CASES Seasons lesson, she discussed having taughta lesson on seasons for her demonstration lesson for her master’sdegree aswell as during her student teaching 7 years earlier (int. #2).

Finally, Maggie also drew on a wealth of additional resourcesfromwithin and outside the CASES educative curriculummaterials.Maggie used the CASES worksheets and lessons as sources of ideas,but typically modified them based on her knowledge of herstudents as discussed above. She also used another feature inCASES, which suggests additional science lessons that wouldfurther support the development of students’ ideas (int. #1). Aboutthis feature, Maggie said:

But also, you know where it says at the bottom [of the unitintroduction page on CASES], "lessons you might also want todevelop", which has been hugely helpful.. So the first week it’slessons that you might want to develop making a barometer,measuring in Celsius and Fahrenheit. Learning to read aweathermap, types of clouds and theweather they bring.. I try to bringin as many of those lessons as I can. (int. #1)

Maggie also discussed her previous use of the CASES images ofinquiry, describing how she incorporated ideas from the imagesinto her own teaching of the lesson (int. #1; int. #2; int. #4). Maggiedid not use the existing images of inquiry extensively, but when shedid read them, she found them useful; they served as curricularresources for her.

Maggie also talked about her use of books by the author VickiCobb. She described these books as potentially too basic for herthird-graders, but decided to use them because of the books’incorporation of science investigations alongside easy-to-interpretinformational text (int. #2). Maggie said:

I thought it was great that it was in a book because the kids getreally excited about going to the library and being able to, and shehas entire series and I think they’re gearedmore for younger kidsbut I feel like maybe younger suburban kids . who, you knowwill have an opportunity to do like do all these great activities andso literally we just went through the book and every time wewould come to an activity we’d stop and do it real quick. (int. #2)

Maggie discussed these and other books as a way to build herstudents’ background knowledge, as discussed above.

In sum, the changes Maggie made to curriculum materialsreflect a rich understanding of her students and of inquiry-orientedscience teaching. She emphasized learning goals, related to bothcontent and inquiry, and used those learning goals to inform herchanges. Furthermore, Maggie drew on an array of knowledge,experiences, and resources to inform her decision-making. Thisbody of knowledge, experiences, and resources contributes to herpedagogical design capacity.

3.2. Catie’s pedagogical design capacity: Meeting(different) learning goals

Catie chose to focus her narrative images of inquiry on thetheme of “how to help kids get organized” (email week 2). Shewanted to further explore and apply ideas she was learning about


as a part of her masters thesis (for a degree in science education ata nearby institution), including foldables (folded pieces of paper,usually with flaps), science notebooks, and worksheets. Catie con-nected the idea of foldables to work done by an author namedDinah Zikes (int. #1). Catie attributed the idea of science notebooksto a specific book (Science Notebooks by Campbell and Fulton)(email week 2; int. #1). Catie wrote:

One of the things I want to incorporate in my theme is the ideathat there may be different ways to organize different kids anddifferent projects and how do you do that within one unit. In“Science Notebooks” they discussed the idea of showing kidsa few methods of recording in general and then letting themdecide what was important to write. I am interested in this fromseveral stand points, some being creativity, how to assess andhow organizational styles function even if they aren’t theteacher’s method of choice. (email week 2)

In our initial interview, Catie discussed both recording andorganizing as skills she wanted her students to develop, definingrecording as being a narrower skill that makes up a subset of thebroader skills related to organizing (int. #1). Catie’s images endedup focusing on recording, and organizing more generally, with anemphasis on recording data. To inform our understanding of herpedagogical design capacity around these ideas, we turn first to therefinements she made to the CASES lessons.

3.2.1. Catie’s curricular adaptationsThe CASES unit with which Catie worked included a prominent

focus on scientific explanations, instantiated as supporting claimswith evidence. The teacher materials provided extensive supportfor the teacher in thinking about explanation and in helping chil-dren construct explanations. Likewise, the student materialsprovided extensive support to help children make claims andsupport those claims with evidence (using data they had collected).Catie had used the unit, including the student materials, theprevious year (see Beyer & Davis, 2008).

Catie’s main curricular adaptations to the CASES curriculummaterials had to do with how data are recorded and how shesupported that recording of data. To summarize, she providedadditional scaffolding through what she said to her students, gavestudents some freedom in determining what data to record, andlimited her use of CASES student worksheets.

A central priority for Catie was students making accurateobservations and descriptions of scientific phenomena. Consis-tently, Catie emphasized how important she thought carefulrecording of observations was. She regularly made statements like:

[I]n this particular experiment [for the Finding Seeds lesson]that we just did they were recording pictures mostly and that’sanother really big skill that I want them to have because. fromthe beginning of the year my big thing is it has to look like whatyou saw in order for someone who is never going to see thatobject to know what it is from your picture. (int. #1)

Throughout our conversations with Catie, both in the interviewsfor this study and throughout our longitudinal study more gener-ally, Catie emphasized this importance of using accurate drawingsto communicate “to someone who wasn’t there.”

Catie made frequent references, especially throughout interview#2, to statements she made in class that provided teacher scaf-folding to the children, typically around the task of recordingobservations or data, often using personal examples or analogies tohelp them see the importance of accuracy and labels (e.g., int. #2).

Catie also emphasized the importance of letting her studentsdecide what data they wanted to record, and of providing guidance

to help them make decisions. For example, in the online discussiontoward the beginning of the process, Catie wrote:

I think that I would use their science notebooks and let themdecide a “best way” to write down the information. I wouldsuggest a chart with pictures of the seeds in one column, andwater, wind and sticking in each column and have themwrite inthe appropriate column what the seed did in order for them topredict that this is the method of travel. I think that they coulddo this. (online disc. post week 2, “Lesson 3: Looking at HowSeeds Move”)

Later, Catie clarified that she did not intend for this to be a free-for-all, but she did want them to think about what will allow themto communicate their ideas clearly to others (online disc. post week4, “Lesson 3: Looking at How Seeds Move”).

Toward the goal of structuring students’ recording of data, Catiemade curricular adaptations related to changing the amount ofscaffolding and changing or eliminating the worksheets. Forexample, Catie incorporated a “foldable” into one of the lessons,rather than using the existing CASES supports for recording data.Catie described how she used a foldable in the lesson on FindingSeeds:

I had them make one, it’s called a six panel . [T]hey drew thesix fruits that their group was working on, on the outside withthe label, and then on the inside flap was a picture of the seedand a little description about it. But that, it’s just one way ofhelping the kids to organize their information that’s not likewriting out a lab report or something like that. . I’m alsofinding that it’s working on their fine motor skills. (int. #1)

Later in the same interview, Catie said:

[A]s far as the Finding Seeds in fruit [lesson] . I organized itpretty much the same way [as in the CASES lesson plan] but therecording was different. I didn’t have them use the pages fromthe notebook. I thought about it but then I was like, well, I’mgoing to try this foldable thing and see how that goes instead.(int. #1)

Changes like this moved her away from using the studentworksheets provided in the CASES materials, which provided scaf-folding focused on not just recording observations, but also usingthose observations as evidence for claims. Catie incorporated insteada collection of other organizational approachesdfoldables, newdata-recording sheets, and the like (e.g., int. #1; int. #2; int. #4). Catiesaid she chosenot to use theCASES studentmaterials because of howlengthy the materials were, and that her students got “annoyed”,“bored”, and “overwhelmed” by them (int. #1; int. #2).

In another instance of a change away from the CASES materials,Catie incorporated a new data table for recording observations ofplants over time, in theDoPlants Need Sunlight? lesson. The boxes inwhich students’ observations were to be drawn were quite a bitsmaller than the ones provided in the CASES materials. Catie dis-cussed somepros andcons of this approach, noting, for example, thatstudentswould bemore easily able to make the “visual comparison”by including more observations on a single page (int. #2)da realbenefit of her change. She did not note, however, how this changemight work against her goal of having her young students withlimited fine motor skills make accurate drawings of their observa-tions (online disc. post week 2, “Lesson 5: Do Plants NeedSunlight?”); in such small boxes, it might be difficult for youngchildren to incorporate the detail she said she valued.

Unlike Maggie’s changes to the CASES lessons, Catie’s changeswere often at odds with the intentions of the CASES curriculumdevelopers. Specifically, the CASES studentmaterials were intended


to support students in recording accurate observation of physicalphenomena and using those observations as evidence in scientificexplanations. By removing thesematerials and replacing themwithother data-recording structures, Catie typically maintained a focuson data collection and making careful observations (and addressedother goals as well) but removed the connection between claimsand evidence. At times, the changes may have also worked againstthe goal of recording accurate observations. As we show in thefollowing section, this move probably had to dowith a fundamentalmismatch between Catie’s learning goals for her students and thoseembodied in the CASES materials.

3.2.2. The basis for Catie’s curricular adaptationsCatie mainly related her curricular adaptations to her learning

goals. She did so more than Maggie did. To summarize, Catie heldhigh expectations for her students and her goals for them werewide ranging. However, her goals did not align with the CASESunit’s emphasis on supporting claims with evidence, and some ofher goals were in tensionwith one another. To a lesser extent, Catiealso based her curricular adaptations on her knowledge of students.

Throughout this study and, indeed, throughout our longitudinaldata focused on Catie (e.g., Davis, 2008; Stevens & Davis, 2007), wesee evidence that Catie held high expectations for her students(e.g., int. #1; int. #2) and that she valued a wide range of goals (e.g.,int. #1; int. #2). She regularly made comments about what sheexpected children to be able to do, despite their young age. Indeed,Catie’s expectations for her students increased throughout theschool year. While discussing her thinking about the GroupingSeeds lesson, in which Catie wanted her second-graders to be ableto classify seeds in multiple ways, Catie said:

[A]t the beginning of the year I try and do just some lessons onjust skill building, like science skill building. [W]e do this littlelessonwith buttons where they have to kind of like sort of themout into different kind of characteristics and I’m happy withthem doing size and color, . but towards the end of the year Iexpect them to be sorting them in other ways because size andcolor for them is something simple and it’s, it’s really not chal-lenging and so they’re done in like 2 min. It’s not something thatgets them thinking.. [W]hy should I bother doing this if it’s notgoing to promote higher level of thinking than what theyalready know? (int. #2)

Later in the same interview, Catie connected this skill of clas-sifying to scientific practice, mentioning that scientists classifydinosaur bones and animals; she noted, “and it’s not just based onsize and color” (int. #2).

On the other hand, Catie’s description of what her studentsaccomplished in the previous year through participation in theCASES plants unit was focused on learning content and on somegeneral skills, not on scientific practice. Catie and the interviewerhad this exchange in the initial interview:

I: . So would you say, did you feel like last year did the kidslearn what you wanted them to learn?C: Oh yeah. Yeah, I, I really thought that they [learned not only]information about plants and, and seeds and all that but I thinkthey also learned a lot about how to interact with each otherin an activity sense and a hands-on sense. How to think aboutthings when the answers aren’t given to you, you knowthat kind of stuff, that’s important for them to learn how to do.(int. #1)

Although Catie mentioned many important outcomes of herprevious use of the plants unit, she did not note the materials’emphasis on providing evidence for claims. The closest she camewas her mention of “how to think about things when the answers

aren’t given to you”which seemed more akin to the general criticalthinking skills Catie held as crucial.

In sum, Catie’s learning goals included a mix of general devel-opmental goals (e.g., the improvement of fine motor skills), generalthinking and learning skills (e.g., creativity, critical thinking, andcollaboration), knowledge and skills in other subjects (e.g., writingsentences), and science-specific knowledge and skills related tocontent and science processes (e.g., learning the proper termi-nology for human body parts, learning to classify along dimensionsother than color and size). These are all, of course, importantlearning goals for lower elementary children, and Catie clearlyvalued her students’ progress in these arenas (see also Davis, 2008).

These interviews also revealed, however, a tension. Catie wan-ted her students to learn to “be organized” but she also wantedthem to develop creativity; she struggled between providingstructure for her students and expecting them to “use their crea-tivity” to find solutions to data-recording problems. For example, indiscussing her reasons for having children decide what data torecord for the How Seeds Move lesson, Catie drew on the bookabout science notebooks, and described her sense of its emphasison allowing children to decidewhat is important to record (int. #1).Here and elsewhere, Catie seemed to value this notion. Yet she alsosaw this freedom as potentially working against students’ devel-opment of ways of representing their ideas that are understandableto others (e.g., int. #1; int. #2). In the end, Catie decided that a mixof approaches was most valuable for meeting her many learninggoals (int. #2)eincluding, but not limited to, creativity and organ-izationdand indeed, in her narratives, Catie suggested a mix oforganizational approaches. These approaches allowed students to,for example, draw their observations and exercise some creativity(both of which Catie valued) but removed the opportunities forthem to support claims with evidence.

In addition to basing her curricular adaptations on her learninggoals, Catie also based her changes on her knowledge of students, toa limited extent. Catie seemed to hold a general belief that everychild is different (e.g., int. #1). In one instance, Catie specificallydiscussed students with special needs (int. #2). Much more typi-cally, Catie said, essentially, that different children have differentstrengths.

On the other hand, Catie also generalized about her students.She stated that many of her decisions were made on the basis thatshe knew that her students were young and, at times, sloppy, bored,or overwhelmed (int. #1; int. #2). Catie made similar character-izations of her second-grade students in a previous study (Beyer &Davis 2008). In discussing how successful students would be withgenerating their own worksheets (an idea Catie had for changingthe Investigating Plants lesson), Catie said:

[S]ome of the kids would be really good about making upworksheets for me but some of them would, aren’t, are just notinto doing kind of thing. So (sigh) they would get sloppy andthat so I’m not sure if it would work or not, right. (int. #2)

Here Catie notes both the issue of sloppiness and the additionalissue of the students’ interests. Although she seemed to point to thechildren’s youth as a reason for the sloppiness she often perceived,at the same time she did not use this to dismiss them from her highexpectations. Despite their youth Catie discussed throughoutinterview #2 how she expected them to learn complicated scienceideas, skills, and vocabulary (e.g., int. #2).

In general, although Catie did draw on her knowledge ofstudents in making curricular adaptations, these and other exam-ples (e.g., int. #4) indicate that she considered her students in lessnuancedways than didMaggie. Catie also drew far less thanMaggiedid on her own previous teaching experiences, other than herprevious experience teaching the CASES plants unitda difference


that is unsurprising given Maggie’s more extensive and variedteaching experiences in similar grades. Far more important forCatie, it seemed, were her learning goals, which, in addition tobeing in tension with one another, were not well-matched withthose instantiated in the curriculum materials.

3.3. Summary of results

Maggie’s changes to the CASES curriculum materials weretypically consistent with the CASES developers’ intentions. Hercurricular adaptations were based mainly on her deep under-standing of her students, although Maggie drew widely on otherknowledge, experiences, and resources, as well. Catie’s changes tothe CASES curriculum materials were mostly consistent with herown learning goals. Although these were reasonable changes tomake, they were not always consistent with the CASES developers’intentions. This lack of alignment may be due to a fundamentalmismatch between the CASES developers’ learning goals (whichinclude an orientation toward evidence-based explanations andusing inquiry practices to support deep understanding of sciencecontent) and Catie’s own learning goals. Catie’s goals emphasizedthe learning of important science content, as well as learning toengage in inquiry practices such as careful observationdbut did notemphasize connecting inquiry practices to content learning, nor therole of evidence-based explanations in science.

Maggie exhibited an effective capacity for pedagogical design, asdescribed by Brown (2009). She could effectively use the curric-ulum materials she has at hand to meet her needs, drawing on herknowledge of students, other personal resources, and resourceswithin the curriculum materials. Catie’s pedagogical designcapacity is less straightforward to describe. On the one hand, Catieregularly drew on her personal resourcesdmost notably, herknowledge and beliefs about learning goals as well as her knowl-edge of studentsdas well as resources like the Science Notebooksand foldables texts to make changes to the curriculum materials.These changes were in line with her intentions and did serve tomeet her learning goals. On the other hand, she dismissedresources within the curriculum materials themselves that mighthave helped her recognize the potential role of constructingscientific explanations in building students’ science contentknowledge (and to recognize the importance of explanationconstruction as a scientific practice in which it is worth engagingstudents). Catie’s changes to curriculummaterials were in line withher own goals for her students; however, she may have neededfurther support in shifting those goals to be in line, in turn, withscience education reforms.

4. Discussion, implications, and conclusions

This study has a few key limitations that must be acknowledged.First, of course, we worked with two teachers. And, these teachersare unusual in some ways compared to many elementary teachersof science worldwide, as described earlier; both were, for example,enthusiastic participants in a research study that involved them inreflecting on their science teaching. The study cannot be general-ized to the entire population of elementary teachers of science, noris doing so our intent. Rather, we hope that the study can inform thefield’s thinking about theoretical and practical implicationsregarding teachers’ use and adaptation of curriculum materials.Second, we did not conduct formal participant member checks. Weworked closely with each teacher during and subsequent to thestudy, including regular and detailed input on the drafts of narra-tives they wrotedbut did not return to them after the fact todiscuss our findings. A final, related point is that while we workedclosely with Catie and attempted to shift her thinking about

inquiry-oriented science teaching, our attempts were unsuccessful.We maintain, however, that despite inconsistencies between Cat-ie’s perspective and ours, her view of science teaching is far morereform-oriented than is typical (see, e.g., the 2007 TIMSS report,Martin et al., 2008; inquiry-oriented elementary science teaching isused minimally across the nations involved in the study). Further-more, while her adaptations to the curriculum materials did notreflect our goals, they were consistent with her own goals.

With those limitations in mind, what conclusions can we drawfrom this work? We elaborate on three main contributions below:that teachers’ learning goals and knowledge of students influenceexactly how they adapt curriculum materials, that even a subtlelack of alignment of goals can influence that adaptation, and thatteacher educators (writ large) should work to support teachers inlearning to productively adapt curriculum materials.

First, this study provides further evidence that teachers’ learninggoals and their knowledge of their students play important roles ininfluencing how a teacher adapts curriculum materials. Otherresearch has consistently identified teachers’ desires to makecurriculummaterials “work for their students” as a major influenceon how teachers change curriculummaterials (e.g., see Remillard &Bryans, 2004; Valencia et al., 2006); this tendency appears to besimilar in other nations, aswell (e.g., Lewis & Tsuchida,1998; Nicol &Crespo, 2006). Teachers’ learning goals have typically been includedunder a broader umbrella describing the teacher’s beliefs aboutteaching her or his subject matter, and those beliefs are also iden-tified as central influences on curricular adaptations (e.g., Collopy,2003; Drake & Sherin, 2006). Ideally, when teachers change high-quality curriculum materials, the changes should maintain theintegrity of the design and work toward the same learning goals(Ben-Peretz, 1990; Bridgham, 1971); however, in reality this is notalways the case (e.g., Pintó, 2005; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002). Thisstudy suggests that if teachers explicitly consider their knowledgeof their students and the alignment between their own and thecurriculum materials’ learning goals when they make changes tothe curriculum materials, the changes they make might be moreproductive. This work could help promote further development ofteachers’ pedagogical design capacity.

Seconddand closely related to the above pointdthis studysupports and extends research that indicates that when a teacher’slearning goals are not aligned with those in the curriculum mate-rials, the teacher’s adaptations may work against the intentionsembodied in the written curriculum materials. Previous researchdescribes how a teacher’s beliefs about teaching particular subjectmatter influence how she or he uses curriculum materials (e.g.,Collopy, 2003). This study extends these findings by showing howeven very subtle differences in subject-matter learning goals canhave a profound impact on how a set of curriculum materials areenacted. For the most part, we view Catie’s orientation towardscience teaching to be far closer to a reform orientation than that ofmost typical elementary teachers. Elementary teachers in the USand Australia tend to emphasize activities that are simply reliableand engaging and/or tend to avoid teaching science altogether(Appleton, 2002, 2007; Davis et al, 2006b). Catie, on the other hand,was enthusiastic about teaching science and worried aboutproviding a coherent learning experience for her students. Butbecause of a few subtle but crucial differences between Catie’sorientation and that incorporated into the CASES materials, Catieremoved the existing emphasis on scientific explanation, a centralaspect of sense-making in science, thus eliminating the students’opportunity to engage in supporting claims with evidence, a keyscientific practice. Her changes also reduced students’ opportuni-ties to make careful observations, which is also a crucial practice inscience. This change to a “critical detail”, as it is termed in a Frenchstudy of teachers’ curricular adaptations (Viennot, Chauvet, Colin, &


Rebmann, 2005), suggests the importance of attending carefully tothe details of teachers’ orientations.

Finally, this study suggests that teachers likely need supportin considering and making productive changes to curriculummaterials. Teachers who have a limited knowledge base (as isoftendreasonablydthe case with elementary teachers of science)who also have limited access to comprehensive curriculum mate-rials (also often the case in elementary science; Fensham, 2008)may have particular difficulty in determining productive ways ofadapting curriculum materials (Valencia et al., 2006). Developingreal skill in analyzing and using curriculum materials is crucial forelementary teachers. This may be particularly true in countrieswhere elementary teachers are generalists and work with idio-syncratic curriculummaterials as opposed to a national curriculum.

How do we support teachers in developing this skill? Theseconclusions have implications for teacher education, professionaldevelopment, and educative curriculum materials. For example,those who develop or provide learning opportunities for teachersaround curriculum materials should support teachers in under-standing the learning goals espoused by the curriculum materials.Developing a deeper and richer understanding of the learning goalsactually espoused by the curriculum materials would help teachersidentify matches and mismatches with their own learning goals.Furthermore, specifically with regard to educative curriculummaterials, providing rationales in educative curriculummaterials tojustify instructional recommendations (Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Ball& Cohen, 1996) may contribute to this goal, and to increasedpedagogical design capacity in general, as these rationales couldhelp teachers connect learning goals and instructional decisions.Potentially, such an understanding might also help teachers shifttoward greater alignment with the reforms. In particular, scienceteachers may need support in identifying the crucial connectionsbetween engaging in inquiry practices and developing sciencecontent knowledge, rather than seeing these as two unrelatedtypes of goals (NRC, 2007). Typical texts in science education in theUS, however, tend not to provide such rationales very often (Beyer,Delgado, Davis, & Krajcik, 2009). New curriculum developmentmust adopt this as a goal. As a model, curriculum developers mightlook to China, where curriculum materials (specifically, teachers’manuals) provide explicit educative supports, including rationalesfor using very specific instructional moves when teaching partic-ular content (see Ma, 1999, for a description of these materials andteachers’ use of them).

In addition, teacher education, professional development, andeducative curriculum materials should help teachers developstrategies for better knowing their students, including theirstudents’ specific ideas about scientific phenomena, their familysituations, and their school context. Teachers need to understandhow students’ science ideas are products of learning in and out ofschool (e.g., Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse, & Feder, 2009; Reeve & Bell,2009). Understanding and leveraging context is a critical aspectof pedagogical design capacity (Brown, 2009) and would helpteachers be better positioned to make productive changes to thecurriculum materials in light of specific learning goals. Preserviceteachers maymake themost progress on identifying their students’specific ideas about scientific phenomena (Smithey, 2008) whereaspracticing classroom teachers may be better positioned to accountfor cultural factors within and across in- and out-of-schoolcontexts. Incorporating questions and prompts into educativecurriculum materials to help teachers consider how their studentsmight experience the lessons might be a helpful feature, particu-larly for online resources in which prompts for reflection could beprovided on demand (Harrington & Quinn-Leering, 1996).

Future research could explore these ideas further. For example,to explore how pedagogical design capacity for elementary science

teaching is impacted by the national policy context, researchersshould explore curricular adaptations in a cross-national studywith a particular focus on comparing two dimensions: nations withand without a national curriculum, and nations where elementaryteachers are generalists and nations where elementary teachersspecialize, for example, in science. In addition, researchers shouldexplore the development of pedagogical design capacity in thecontext of lesson study (e.g., in Japan; see Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) orother highly supportive communities of practice.

In sum, Maggie and Catie, in different ways, explored andarticulated their own thinking about and priorities in scienceteaching and the ways in which those priorities shaped theircurriculum use. We use their experiences to inform our under-standing of how teachers adapt curriculum materialsdwhat kindsof changes do theymake, and onwhat basis do they decide tomakethose changes. Most importantly, we see this study as informingthe work of teacher educators (writ large) through contributingto improved understandings of how elementary teachers useand adapt curriculum materials. This should guide our thinkingas we work to help elementary teachers be effective users ofscience curriculum materials with effective capacity for pedagog-ical design.

Acknowledgments

This research is funded by a Presidential Early Career Award forScientists and Engineers (PECASE) grant from the National ScienceFoundation, REC grant #0092610, as well as a Centers for Learningand Teaching (CLT) grant #0227557. However, any opinions, find-ings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in thismaterial are those of the authors.We greatly appreciate the interestand cooperation of the teachers who made the research reportedhere possible. We also thank the CASES research group at theUniversity of Michigandin particular, Julie Smitheydandmembersof the Center for Curriculum Materials in Science for their help inthinking about these issues.

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