well, one related to how water quality changed in a local river over time and as it proceeded through the valley. Students then took various stakeholder positions to think about how water quality could be optimized for the people of the valley. they then needed to build arguments about this. In another, students analyzed soil quality in various locations in the valley to argue about what should be done with vacant land where the soil samples were taken.
One challenge is for teachers to know which students need the most help. In our most recent redesign of the tool we built in a tool for teachers to monitor student progress more easily.

Monitoring student progress is a great addition to the tool. I also am curious about how you capture the arguments or stakeholder positions across classrooms. I imagine that you are getting a range of responses from students and it might be great to illustrate or map some of them.

Monitoring student progress is a great addition to the tool. I also am curious about how you capture the arguments or stakeholder positions across classrooms. I imagine that you are getting a range of responses from students and it might be great to illustrate or map some of them.

well, there are the entires in the scaffolds – they need to write answers to prompts and build their arguments there. there is the culminating activity, like persuasive presentation, and then we capture process data through things like video.

We have worked with 7 teachers. The amount of time working with teachers I guess is a bit hard to quantify because there is some one-to-one interaction and some asynchronous online PD (which of course also involves us interacting with teachers, just differently). And it varies a little bit by the level of related experience of the teacher. So we worked with three teachers who had never done any inquiry-oriented teaching, and the other teachers had done some. So for the first group, they needed more time. But for all of them, it is a lot more than a one-week workshop. I hope that this answers your question, if not please let me know.

Yes, it does. Between your response here and below to Nevin’s question, I’ve got a good sense of how you’ve worked to support teachers through the process. Thanks.

Important question—to take a deeper look at the nature of argumentation that is emerging from these explorations (and examples of them). Is there a way to capture the maturity or sophistication of the scientific argumentation of students over time?

to address Dr. Drayton’s question, in one study, we found that simply the process of engaging in PBL led to significant improvements in epistemic beliefs among higher-achieving and average-achieving 7th grade students by factors of .81 SDs and .31 SDs, respectively. In another study, we found that the epistemic beliefs of 6th grade students did not improve from pre to post, but that their epistemic aims were substantially more sophisticated when that teacher was part of the microsystem in which they were engaging.
To address Dr. Guilfoy’s question, there are different approaches. Often, people look at the structure of arguments, e.g., claims-evidence-premises. Clark Chinn recently proposed that one think about argument quality from the perspective of epistemic support.

So I was wondering what instrument are you using to measure epistemic belief’s? Also, when determining quality of argument what is your grain size? Are you looking at individual pieces in a students argument and quantifying how many instances of evidence are provided for a claim or simply the sophistication of the claim and its ability to persuade?

that’s a great question. it is a complicated issue. For epistemic beliefs, we have a self-report survey that is adapted with permission from that used by:
Elder, A. D. (1999). An exploration of fifth-grade students’ epistemological beliefs in science and an investigation of their relation to science learning. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text. (Publication number AAT 9929819)
But we also supplement that with video data of students as they are working during the unit.
For looking at argument quality, it is again a complicated issue. We have developed various approaches looking at the structure and content of students arguments. We also are looking to integrate a new approach advocated by Clark Chinn of looking at the epistemic foundations of students arguments.

we have a generic computer-based scaffold to support the creation of evidence-based arguments that we continually work to improve based on empirical studies. But we also develop content support by working with the teacher. this is to avoid having students just do a google search and then unproductively go through the first search results. The type of support required by teachers in these types of units is contingent scaffolding, so much of what we need to do is help teachers learn to dynamically assess students’ current abilities and customize support on the spot to provide just the right amount of support. That is one of the hardest things to do as a teacher, and of course we do not think we have all the answers on how to do it, but we help teachers understand the nature of the different kinds of support they can choose from, what kinds of questions they can ask to dynamically assess students, and we try to have other teachers model this through video.
so for phases through which we work with teachers, I would say the first phase is really getting to know the teacher, her/his experiences, and what areas of the standards he/she sees as areas in which students need to improve. Next, we propose some ideas for units and work with the teacher to optimize those ideas.
One report in which we discuss how we worked with one teacher is here:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10972-015-9419-2

yes, we have had them present to county commissioners. We have been trying to tie what students do more into local issues, so that students can think they have a greater stake in what they are investigating. it seems to be easier to get student buyin that there is a problem when it is a local issue, that they can get their hands dirty investigating, rather than an issue of a more national or global level. Of course, the issues that they investigate – water quality, soil science, and so forth – are not just local issues, they are also issues in other areas.
In the area of the country where we are, it is a desert climate, and being in the Salt Lake watershed, there is a lot of land that is unusable for farming due to salt deposits and so forth. So it is comparatively easy to get kids to think that there issues that directly impact their lives.

Do you think the increase in student buy-in, that you’re seeing in projects with local connections, is something that you can measure (or are measuring) as an outcome of your work? Or is this more of an informal observation from your interactions with the students?

well, it is something that has been seen through informal interactions, but also some through interviews. It is also predicted by motivation theory. I wouldn’t say that it is a major thrust of our research, but when you are dealing with students who largely have never done inquiry-based science before, you need to do what you can to make what they are doing potentially personally meaningful.