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  1. Susan Kowalski
  2. http://www.bscs.org/sue-kowalski-senior-research-scientist
  3. Senior Research Scientist
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. BSCS Science Learning
  1. Catherine Stimac
  2. Executive Producer, Education Productions
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Oregon Public Broadcasting

Energy: A Multidisciplinary Approach for Teachers (EMAT) Designing and Studyi...

NSF Awards: 1118643

2016 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades 9-12, Adult learners

Energy concepts are the foundation of all science. But energy is abstract and difficult to teach. EMAT is a multimedia, immersive online professional development experience for teachers. Working alone or in groups, teachers analyze classroom video to further develop skills on how to reveal, support and challenge student thinking and create coherent science storylines in energy lessons. Visually compelling animations and hands-on interactive learning experiences allow users to explore complex systems and make and test predictions to better understand energy phenomena. A facilitation guide provides teacher educators the support they need to engage teachers in rich discussions as teachers analyze practice. Watch the EMAT highlights video to learn more.

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Discussion from the NSF 2016 STEM For All Video Showcase (20 posts)
  • Icon for: Katherine McNeill

    Katherine McNeill

    Associate Professor of Science Education
    May 16, 2016 | 02:11 p.m.

    Wonderful video examples of the students trying to figure out their ideas! The use of video can be so powerful for teachers.

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 16, 2016 | 03:00 p.m.

    Thanks, Katherine! The course showcases strategies teachers can use to uncover students’ ideas and help push students toward deeper scientific understanding of phenomena.

  • Icon for: Sally Crissman

    Sally Crissman

    Senior Science Educator
    May 16, 2016 | 03:24 p.m.

    Susan, Our (Focus on Energy) work with energy in elementary school overlaps with yours in high school in many good ways. Did you consider a life science context? Elementary teachers are eager to track energy flows in, for example, a fresh water ecosystem or food web.

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 16, 2016 | 03:38 p.m.

    Yes, Sally, our projects are highly complementary! Our EMAT course does include a life science context. Using data from NREL and GLBRC, teachers can track energy and matter flows in the production and use of biofuels. Teachers examine the relative efficiency of corn grain, corn stover, and switchgrass as sources of biofuel.

  • Icon for: Deborah Hanuscin

    Deborah Hanuscin

    Associate Professor
    May 16, 2016 | 04:27 p.m.

    “If you’re teaching science, you’re teaching energy”— This really reflects the vision of the NGSS well!

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 17, 2016 | 11:32 a.m.

    Thanks for stopping by, Deborah. We made a concerted effort to put crosscutting energy concepts at the forefront. We found that teachers had a very difficult time articulating connections between everyday phenomena and key energy ideas.

  • Icon for: Sarah Gerard

    Sarah Gerard

    Facilitator
    Education Researcher
    May 17, 2016 | 09:24 p.m.

    Love the computer animations to help with visualization, Susan. Have you and the team encountered any challenges that seem unique to online professional development versus in-person professional development?

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 17, 2016 | 09:41 p.m.

    Thanks for your question, Sarah. There are several challenges with online vs. in-person professional development (PD). In our face-to-face lesson analysis PD, teachers develop trust fairly quickly and are more willing to be open to sharing their own videos with other teachers and critiquing each others’ videos. In EMAT, we had to move away from using the participating teachers’ own videos. In spite of discussion groups and online synchronous discussions, we were unable to develop the necessary level of trust. Instead, we had teachers analyze videos of teachers not participating in the course.

    Another important difference between face-to-face and online PD was in the length and intensity of discussions. Our face-to-face lesson analysis discussions (for another project) would last 3-4 hours. We did not think we would be able to get teachers to participate in an online discussion for that length of time. As a result, the lesson analysis discussions online were just 2 hours each, and tended to be shallower than what we have found in face-to-face PD.

  • Icon for: Sally Crissman

    Sally Crissman

    Senior Science Educator
    May 18, 2016 | 05:16 p.m.

    Interesting! And consistent with our experience with online vs face-to-face PD. As a developer/facilitator I found teachers were okay with positive, supportive critique and comments and needed coaching to ask probing (that might be interpreted as critical) questions or to offer contradictory evidence! This was true online or face to face but I’d agree that changing the culture can happen faster face to face.

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 18, 2016 | 06:36 p.m.

    Yes, coaching teachers to provide evidence-based critiques of their colleagues’ videos is a huge component of our lesson analysis work (both face-to-face and online). We just weren’t very successful in getting critiques in the online format! I’d be very interested in hearing of successful online coaching strategies to help teachers feel comfortable making evidence-based critiques of videos (when they have only met their colleagues online).

  • Icon for: Kelly Pudelek

    Kelly Pudelek

    Facilitator
    Survey Specialist
    May 18, 2016 | 10:13 a.m.

    Great video! How did you measure teacher and student outcomes?

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 18, 2016 | 11:28 a.m.

    Hi Kelly, thanks for your question. We measured teacher content knowledge, teachers’ ability to analyze video, and teacher practice. We also measured student content knowledge. We developed the teacher and student content measures specifically for the EMAT project. For teachers’ ability to analyze video, we used Kathy Roth’s prompt and scoring rubric from her STeLLA work (see Roth et al., 2011 in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching). For teacher practice, we had teachers film a lesson in the year prior to their participation in EMAT and another lesson in the year following their participation in EMAT. Kathy Roth and I developed a scoring rubric to analyze teaching practice aligned with the STeLLA strategies. There is a lot more detail in the paper that we have attached to this video presentation if you are interested in learning more, and please let me know if you have any more questions.

  • Icon for: Joni Falk

    Joni Falk

    Co-Director of CSR at TERC
    May 18, 2016 | 02:27 p.m.

    Really interesting video on energy curriculum. Does the project include a professional development component? Great to see the students grappling with their own conceptions of energy based on experiments. When do you instruct teachers to step in or provide resources to students with misconceptions and when do you advocate that they hold back?

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 18, 2016 | 06:14 p.m.

    Joni, thanks for your question. The EMAT course is first and foremost a professional development course. The resources are geared to support high school teachers in deepening their understanding of key energy concepts and enhancing their ability to teach key energy concepts. We have an agreement with the National Teachers Enhancement Network at Montana State University for them to offer the course for 3 graduate credits on a rolling basis. That said, we also have plans to release the full course in August so that teachers can work through it (in part or in whole) individually or with professional learning communities. This non-facilitated version will be available free of charge to teachers and districts. We will also be providing a facilitation guide to support teacher leaders as they lead a PLC through the EMAT course. Finally, we found that many of our participating teachers thought that the animations and interactive learning experiences were useful as stand-alone elements for their high school students. The media resources will be freely available to be used in that manner, but we are hoping (sometime in the future) to develop some student materials to wrap the animations and interactives into coherent mini-lessons.

  • Icon for: Marian Pasquale

    Marian Pasquale

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 19, 2016 | 08:50 a.m.

    This PD is a great way to help teachers understand the idea of a crosscutting theme. Susan, what kind of protocol did you give teachers to analyze each other’s lessons? Did you design your own?

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 19, 2016 | 04:56 p.m.

    Hi Marian, thanks for stopping by. We used Kathleen Roth’s STeLLA (Science Teachers Learning through Lesson Analysis) protocol. Her protocol includes a set of video viewing norms as well templates for guiding teachers in making claims about student thinking and science content story lines in the video based on evidence from the video. They are described nicely in her 2011 Journal of Research in Science Teaching paper.

  • Icon for: Teresa Eastburn

    Teresa Eastburn

    Digital Learning & UCAR Connect Lead
    May 20, 2016 | 02:28 a.m.

    Hi Susan, This looks like a terrific tool for the study of energy in formal settings. Kudos to BSCS. You mentioned to Kathleen Roth’s STella lesson protocol to Marian above. I’ll look for the paper as it sounds like something I am in search of right now. I’ll visit the EMAT website. But kudos again to a fellow Colorado org on a great project. Good luck!

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 20, 2016 | 11:06 a.m.

    Thanks, Teresa! Our NARST paper is linked above. Please let me know if you would like any further information.

  • Icon for: Sarah Pidgeon

    Sarah Pidgeon

    May 20, 2016 | 12:57 p.m.

    This is such a fantastic project! I cant wait to check out the videos. Just curious- do you address oil and gas in addition to coal within the units?

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 20, 2016 | 01:02 p.m.

    Hi Sarah. We would have loved to have included oil and natural gas but we just didn’t have the space and time. At the end of the course, we do include an activity that examines the cost of generating electrical energy from different sources, and we do include natural gas in that analysis. If we could expand the course, oil and natural gas would be at the top of the list!

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.