A professional learning community activity for science teachers: How to incorporate discourse-rich instructional strategies into science lessons

AbstractIn this article we describe current educational research underlying a comprehensive model for building a scientific classroom discourse community. We offer a professional development activity for a school-based professional learning community, providing specific science instructional strategies within this interactive teaching model. This design activity provides a quick and practical means of transforming science lessons to be more engaging for students. Through this activity teachers can redesign any science lesson by focusing on each of the five core components of a scientific classroom discourse community: (a) scientific inquiry, (b) oral discourse, (c) written discourse, (d) academic language development, and (e) learning principles. By using this structure teachers will be better able to meet the Next Generation Science Standards and facilitate greater interdisciplinary learning. An example of a redesigned water cycle lesson is provided.Keywords: teacher professional learning community, classroom discourse, instructional strategies, standards-based science lessonsIntroductionIn these post-NCLB days of accountability and high-stakes testing we, as teacher educators and professional development providers, often hear teachers express concern about a lack of time to teach using inquiry-based instruction. However, since 1996 U.S. national science education standards have explicitly asked science teachers to teach using more inquiry. With the introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve, Inc., 2013) and its strong emphasis on teaching scientific practices and process skills, it is clear that inquirybased teaching practices will continue to be the gold standard for science curricular design and instruction. One way science teachers can brainstorm ways to integrate more inquiry into their lessons is by collaborating with their colleagues to transform standard verification lab activities into more active learning opportunities for students to talk and write about science, thus increasing opportunities to make meaning of core concepts. Teachers can encourage students' higher-level thinking by using a model of a scientific classroom discourse community to teach science. This article outlines a process for science teachers, as participants in their local professional learning communities (PLCs), to incorporate more inquiry-based science instruction infused with oral and written discourse to meet national and state science education standards. We offer a transformed lesson on the water cycle as an example of how this process can result in constructing standards-aligned opportunities for student learning.Professional Learning CommunitiesWith the rising popularity of schoolbased professional learning communities (PLCs) (Dufour, 2004) comes the need for more readily-available, focused and practical science teacher professional development (PD) activities. Schools and districts may mandate PLCs and provide time for teachers to collaborate, but science departments composed of busy teachers are pressed for time to find and vet a regular supply of adequate and reliable activities and materials for their own use. Even when schools and districts provide in-house professional development (PD), the focus is not explicitly on how to improve the quality and effectiveness of science instruction.The Communication in Science Inquiry Project (CISIP) was a National Science Foundation grant-funded research program focused on developing a model for, and aiding teachers in, building scientific classroom discourse communities (SCDC) (Figure 1) (Baker, et al., 2009; Baker, et al., 2011; Lewis, et al., 2011). Another critical aspect of the CISIP's success was that teachers participated in school-based teams. Through their colleagues' support and feedback on their lessons CISIP teachers affected change in their classrooms. From this work we have developed, and present here, a practical activity to similarly encourage PLC members to redesign their science lesson plans for the purpose of boosting student engagement and learning. …