Project Texas.

A Nontraditional Teacher Professional Development Model for Science Education

Recent efforts to reform elementary science education call for changes in the way we think about teacher education and in the way we approach staff development.

Twenty elementary school teachers are sitting on hay wagons driven by Texas Park Rangers. It is a beautiful moonlit night, and the evening is full of sounds. The teachers hold flashlights, electric lamps, and notepads. The group's task is to locate and record as many species of animals as they can in this ecoregion of Texas known as the Piney Woods. Later, they will record this information, along with their reflections about the experience, in a journal. This expedition is part of a year-long professional development program in science education that immerses teachers in a learning experience quite different from the workshop model familiar to most educators.

Funded in part by an Eisenhower Grant for Higher Education, Project Texas is a cooperative effort between the Education Department of the San Antonio Zoo, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the Urban Systemic Initiative. It provides professional development for K-8 teachers from several school districts serving underrepresented populations. One of the purposes of this project is to help develop, through a nontraditional model, teacher knowledge of the seven different ecoregions of Texas. By personalizing their understanding of the Texas ecoregions, the teachers then will be able to develop similar experiences for their students. This program provides a meaningful context that models how to integrate field experiences, investigative activities, problem-solving strategies, and cooperative learning opportunities into K-8 science instruction.

The Rationale

The idea for this expeditionary learning model of professional development was generated from a review of the literature about effective models of staff development, particularly in the field of science education. Recent efforts to reform elementary science education call for changes in the way we think about teacher education and in the way we approach staff development. Researchers agree that effective professional development programs must give teachers opportunities to develop new understandings through personally meaningful learning experiences (Reys, Reys, Barnes, Beem, & Papick, 1997; Schumm, Vaughn, Gordon, & Rothlein, 1994; Willis & Harcombe, 1998). This learner-centered vision of faculty development is grounded in constructivist learning theory (Brooks & Brooks, 1993; Siegel & Cocking, 1977; Tobin, 1993) and focuses on teaching for understanding (Cohen, McLaughlin, & Talbert, 1993). The professional literature argues that science education will be enhanced as a result of incorporating the elements of effective science instruction such as constructivist teaching (Tobin, 1993), hands-on science (Silversten, 1993), interdisciplinary instruction (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1990; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990), and process skills (American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 1993) into staff development programs.

Our goal in Project Texas was to engage teachers in a science topic they were required to teach (in this case, the ecoregions of Texas), in a program that modeled constructivist science teaching. To meet that goal, a new model of teacher professional development was necessary, since most staff development efforts typically consist of single-subject workshops or sporadic curriculum planning days. Although these models may be useful for presenting new ideas to teachers, there is little evidence that these activities have a long-term impact on improving or changing daily classroom practices (Osterman & Kottkamp, 1993). We agreed with the rationale put forth by Reys et al. (1997) that more robust staff development programs are needed if teachers are expected to implement teaching methods identified in a National Research Council report (1996) on science education standards.

Our decision to use an expeditionary learning model of professional development was inspired by Udall and Rugen (1997), who described weeklong summits that focus on the teacher-as-learner concept by immersing teachers in experiences that create opportunities for inquiry, reflection, and sharing in the context of real-life dilemmas. Udall and Rugen believe that "when teachers have lived an educational experience and reflected on their own growth as learners, they are better able to grasp the educational value of the experience and to reap its rewards in the classroom" (p. 404). This immersion model of faculty development seemed to meet our goal of a collaborative, inquiry-based, constructivist model of professional development.

Quality professional development also needs to be ongoing and include long-range support for teachers as they make incremental changes over time (Reys et al., 1997; Vukelich & Wrenn, 1999). Consequently, we decided to expand on Udall and Rugen's model and formulate a grant proposal for a year-long study of the Texas ecoregions.

The Program Design

It was important that Project Texas model the teaching and learning that we expected the teachers to implement with their students--that is, hands-on science embedded in inquiry processes that provide opportunity for reflection (AAAS, 1993). With this in mind, we identified a set of objectives for the participants (see Figure 1) and developed the framework for Project Texas using four different components: week-long summer workshops, field trips or learning excursions to the different ecoregions, journal writing, and monthly get-togethers.

The Workshops. We strove for diversity among the project participants, using a number of criteria, including teaching experience, grade levels, and school districts. Our first task, therefore, was to provide an opportunity for the directors and participants to get to know one another. The teachers spent time together at the beginning of the project in order to develop a sense of community and to help clarify the project goals. Focused interviews helped determine the participants' needs, aspirations, and goals related to their teaching practices and to their student learning outcome goals in science. The interviews also provided information about the teachers' background knowledge and beliefs about science education. These focused interviews were conducted two more times during the life of the project, so that the co-directors could continue to plan appropriate learning opportunities.

The teachers worked together for the first two weeks in a variety of activities that set the tone for the duration of the project. The participants explored the study topic with each other and with Texas field biologists, using approaches such as cooperative group work, investigation, and problem solving.

The Learning Excursions. Expeditions to the various ecoregions of Texas were the foundation of this project. Facilitated by project co-directors, teachers engaged in activities with field biologists, park educators and managers, and other community resources within each ecoregion. Immersing themselves in an ecoregion provided the teacher-learners with rich and meaningful content and, more important, created a purpose and context for learning.

Throughout the expeditions, teachers were encouraged to leave their "comfort zone," and to take risks, problem solve, raise questions, and make mistakes. For example, one of the activities was a canoe trip through an area of the ecoregion known as the Piney Woods. For many teachers, this was their first time canoeing. One kindergarten teacher wrote:

Today was full of apprehension for me. Ever since the canoeing thing was mentioned at the orientation meeting, I haven't been so sure. I have never canoed in my life! But guess what ... the canoe trip was magnificent! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am so glad that I forced myself to go through with something I normally would have never attempted!

The participants formulated questions and hypotheses, conducted simple experiments or investigations, used various tools, gathered data and formulated explanations, and analyzed and critiqued their own work. Teachers became active participants in their own learning, rather than assuming the passive teacher role so often found in traditional staff development programs. These steps support teachers' development of the skills fundamental to scientific inquiry as outlined in the National Research Council publication National Science Education Standards (1996).

To help teachers make this shift from other-directed to self-directed learning, they were given opportunities to determine their own needs and interests, and choose those activities that would best help them realize goals for their own teaching practices. Many were uncomfortable at first with the lack of a preset "curriculum" for these expeditions. Each person was responsible for his or her own learning, choosing from a menu of activities. This expeditionary/discovery model of learning was a new experience for most of the project participants, whose idea of teaching was to tell or explain, and whose experience of staff development was a show-and-tell, one-size-fits-most model. As the year progressed, however, teachers not only looked forward to choosing their activities, but also assumed a more assertive attitude in suggesting what should be included in the excursions.

The Reflective Journals. Reflection is an important component of professional development (Osterman & Kottkamp, 1993; Reys et al., 1997; Vukelich & Wrenn, 1999). Teachers need time to make connections, to look with a critical eye at what is being experienced, and to build bridges between their own learning and their teaching practices. Change will only occur when teachers realize (through reflection) that something needs to be changed in their own professional practice.

The Project Texas participants maintained journals to help them make sense of their expedition impressions, as well as apply their experience to their teaching practices. They shared the journals with the co-directors, as well as with other project participants. We believe that the exercise of clarifying their thoughts for other people led the teachers to achieve greater understanding for themselves about what they knew, what questions remained unanswered, what they still wanted to learn, and how their learning process related to others'.

The Monthly Get-Togethers. Collegial support is necessary to sustain changed behavior over time (Gibbons, Kimmel, & O'Shea, 1997). Each month, the project participants came together to share classroom projects, discuss new ideas, and solve problems directly related to their teaching and their students. The participants also continued to build on their knowledge base about the ecoregions by interacting with urban biologists from the state Department of Parks and Wildlife, who were invited to participate in the monthly meetings.

Most important, these meetings provided the co-directors with an opportunity to help the participants make the bridge between what they were experiencing as learners in Project Texas and what they would do in their own classrooms. The teachers helped each other to understand how the skills and teaching practices they acquired from such a project transferred to their teaching practice in all areas. For example, one kindergarten teacher shared how, because of her participation in Project Texas, she changed the way she uses math materials in her classroom. Rather than using direct instruction for teaching concepts, she now provides her students with materials to investigate and manipulate. This step represented a big risk for her. Another 3rd-grade teacher wrote:

I'm more willing to have free exploration and trash the textbooks for a more student-directed curriculum. I pull information from different resources to make science fun to learn. I have had a blast with my students in doing lots of hands-on, inquiry activities.

This monthly "meeting of the minds" sometimes challenged teachers' assumptions and provoked dis-equilibrium. These interactions helped to improve the teachers' understandings about their experiences, helped each teacher create his or her own ideas for improving teaching practices, and supported them as they discovered meaningful connections between what they were learning from the project and what they were doing in the classroom. Community was built at these monthly meetings as teachers came together and shared their questions, struggles, and successes and drew on the friendship and talents of their colleagues. This community of learners created a common bond that encouraged the participants to" ... create a collaborative endeavor where each participant brings meaning and questions to the conversation" (Olson, 1997, p. 22).

One teacher wrote in her journal:

It seems that since Project Texas brought us together, we (myself and teachers from other districts) have been doing a lot together. It has helped us to cross district lines and get to know one another. This has been so helpful to me.

Another teacher wrote:

Today our group got together to work on our projects. What a wonderful time it was, all sharing ideas and working passionately! The fellowship was truly wonderful. We have all made some really neat friends and [are] bonding in a special way. All of this leading to one main focal point--to make things better for our students. I am so grateful to be a part of this project.

Evaluating the Impact of Project Texas

The National Staff Development Council (1994) urges teacher educators to reconsider evaluation practices accompanying staff development efforts. Often, evaluation of staff development programs is limited to measuring teacher satisfaction with the delivery model or measuring the increase in teacher factual knowledge, with little or no measure of the impact of the program on curriculum implementation and student outcomes (O'Brien, 1992). Toward this end, we created tools that assessed teachers' perceptions of the model's effect on their own growth as professionals, as well as tools to determine the impact on classroom teaching practices. We were especially interested in how effectively teachers transferred their own experience as learners into their classroom practice, especially in science instruction. The instruments used for evaluation included pre-and posttests to measure growth in content knowledge, surveys related to the project's objectives, classroom observations, and focused interviews.

Taken as a whole, the data collected revealed that the participants had achieved the objectives of the project far beyond even their own expectations. For example, teacher content knowledge increased from 37 percent to as high as 209 percent. Classroom observations supported what teachers reported in journals; teachers were observed using a more concrete, hands-on, learner-centered approach to science instruction that included experiential and experimental approaches to problem solving and the use of manipulative materials.

An unanticipated but related effect of the learning excursion model was that it enhanced the participants' leadership skills. As teachers' self-confidence in their effectiveness as educators increased, so did their confidence in their ability to assume a variety of leadership roles related to improving instruction on their own campuses and within the broader community. This effect reflects what we read in the literature related to outcome expectancies (Bandura, 1982; Haney, Czerniak, & Lumpe, 1996). Successful staff development programs empower the teacher-as-learner, and as a result, confidence levels increase proportionately. The following list highlights some of the leadership roles that the participants are presently involved in as a direct result of the success they experienced in the project.

* Faculty mentor for science instruction

* Facilitator of faculty development workshops

* Environmental project director for school

* Garden club organizer

* Presenter at a science conference

* Voted "Teacher of the Year"

* Chairperson of the Technology Department

* Campus facilitator for science instruction

* Curriculum writer for science instruction.

The Need for a New Approach

A shortcoming of today's popular approach to staff development is that teachers are considered as consumers of educational programs and products, rather than as professional educators. The dominant approach to staff development is the transfer of educational theory, which is treated as objective knowledge to be passed from researcher to practitioner. Teachers are treated as automatons, and judged on their ability to apply the training material or model. Rarely has professional development concentrated on promoting the evolution and support of teachers as learners who are capable of using practice-based inquiries to guide the revisioning of their teaching practices.

Unlike traditional models of staff development, teachers participating in Project Texas are not expected to mechanistically replicate the expeditionary model. In fact, it would be unrealistic to expect them to do so within the confines of a public education system. Rather, the expectation is that they will generalize the cognitive skills and teaching practices they have gained through the expeditionary model in a meaningful way in the context of their own classrooms. A model of staff development based on constructivist principles should encourage an open-ended process of fashioning and refashioning teaching strategies. Schifter (1996) aptly describes this process when she writes that for those willing to partake in a professional development model based on constructivism, there is no point of arrival, but rather a path that leads to further growth and change.

Bridging Experience and Practice

Project Texas was designed as an alternative model of staff development to more effectively support teachers in improving their approach to science education. The indicator of success for this project was the participants' ability to analyze and reflect on their own learning as participants in the expeditionary process, and to make meaningful connections to their own classroom practices. As Elliott (1991) points out, pedagogical changes depend upon teachers' ability to make careful reflections about their classroom instruction.

We wanted each teacher to walk away from the experience with his or her own ideas of how to apply the skills and knowledge acquired in one context to another setting. The data collected during classroom visits show that Project Texas helped teachers to do just that. Another tangible sign of success is the way in which the teacher participants now take the initiative in writing curriculum, assuming leadership roles within their districts, and challenging themselves to develop new technological skills. More important, however, is the change in teacher perceptions about their own teaching practices, as illustrated in their journal reflections. One teacher's journal entry summarizes the comments found in most of the participants' writings:

My way of teaching science has really changed because of what I have learned as a result of working in this Project. I have implemented more inquiry and hands-on learning in my science classes. I see a difference in the science skills in my students. I see more observing, comparing, measuring, inferring, and predicting. We always included process skills, but now there is much more use of them. The Project as a whole has been very valuable to me and my teaching. I feel it has strengthened my knowledge base and my instructional strategies. It has helped me to introduce more effective instruction in all subject areas, not just science.

Conclusion

Education reform is always a great source of uncertainty and discomfort. Reinventing teachers' professional development presents a challenge in an environment in which departure from the norm is not often enthusiastically embraced or immediately supported. The good news, however, as Ball (1996) describes, is that more and more educators are beginning to turn to a professional development model of inquiry that engages teachers in invention, trial, exploration, and discovery. For many teachers, this implies developing a new understanding about pedagogy, as well as their own learning style.

The success of Project Texas as an alternative model for teacher professional development is evident in the persistent efforts of the project participants to improve their teaching practices in the area of science education. Our challenge is to continue to experiment with and reformulate our hypotheses of what is effective teacher professional development. There are still many questions to be answered.

Goals for Project Texas Participants

1. As a result of immersion in the different ecoregions of Texas, teachers will be able to classify and identify the characteristics of all of the ecoregions.

2. Through excursions and interactive experiences with experts in the field, teachers will be able to identify and discuss endangered species (and related causes of extinction or decline), including plants and animals of Texas contained in the different ecoregions.

3. Through excursions, research projects, reading, and discussion, teachers will develop a knowledge base about the different cultural and economic resources related to each ecoregion of Texas.

4. Throughout the program, teachers will be able to identify the role of zoos, aquariums, and botanical gardens in managing and protecting native and exotic endangered wildlife.

5. Throughout the program, teachers will keep a journal to document their developing knowledge about the Texas ecoregions, and will use these journals to develop resources for classroom and zoo use.

6. After experiencing firsthand the different ecoregions of Texas, teachers will develop and utilize science instructional resources for use in the science curriculum in their own classrooms.

7. After having researched available materials for students about the ecoregions of Texas, teachers will develop a comprehensive bibliography of resources related to Texan culture, history, and ecoregions that can be used with and by students in the classroom and the San Antonio Zoo.

8. Using slides, photographs, and video taken during the field experiences, teachers will develop 'multimedia presentations about the ecoregions of Texas for use in the classroom, at the San Antonio Zoo, and for USI peer staff development.

Figure 1

A sample of activities for participants to choose from during a week-long excursion

PROJECT TEXAS BIG BEND ITINERARY OF ACTIVITIES

Sunday - departure

Monday

Tour Balmorhea State Park with park ranger Horseback ride on trails to study vegetation and wildlife with biologist Drive to Marfa to view the Marfa Lights

Tuesday

Birding tour at Fort Davis Mt. Locke and tour of McDonald Observatory Star party at observatory in the evening

Wednesday

Full day of activities at Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area, led by biologists. Focus to include desert habitat, fire ecology and management, and big horn sheep.

Thursday

Big Bend National Park Chisos Basin Hike the Window Trails Barton Warnack Environmental Education Center

Friday

River float trip Santa Elena Canyon

Saturday - return

Figure 2

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Blanche Desjean-Perrota is Assistant Professor, Division of Education, University of Texas at San Antonio. Deborah Buehler is a former elementary teacher and, until recently, was the Education Manager, San Antonio Zoo.