A Curriculum Linked Professional Development Approach to Support Teachers' Adoption of Web GIS Tectonics Investigations.
A curriculum linked professional development approach designed to support middle level science teachers' understandings about tectonics and geospatial pedagogical content knowledge was developed. This approach takes into account limited face to face professional development time and instead provides pedagogical support within the design of a Web based curriculum with extensive teacher support materials. This paper illustrates how curriculum design can provide teachers with supports for content (e.g. tectonics) and geospatial instruction with Web GIS. The effectiveness of the approach is presented with a focus on how the curriculum implementation of the Web GIS tectonics investigations and the curriculum support materials provided teachers with the professional growth required for successful curriculum implementation. In the study of the Earth and environmental sciences, the data pertinent to any question must be geospatially referenced to be meaningful. The ability to explore interrelationships amongst and within data sets requires data manipulation while preserving geospatial relationships. These analyses are most effectively done with a geographic information system (GIS) and necessitate geospatial thinking and reasoning skills. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 16(3) 349 Geospatial thinking and reasoning is a cognitive process that enables learners to extract useful information from spatial (twoor three dimensional) representations of reality. In the context of Earth science, it typically involves geospatial analysis and interpretation of maps, models, diagrams, and charts, and simultaneous analysis and interpretation of multiple data sets. Recent research by teams of learning scientists confirms that spatial ability, measured by visualization and reasoning tasks, is a significant factor in STEM subject achievement (Lubinski, 2010; Wai, Lubinsky, Benbow, 2009) For many concerned with widening access to and involvement in the sciences, these findings are significant, especially since research has confirmed that gender plays a role in some spatial abilities (Voyer, Voyer, Bryden, 1995) Calls have followed for explicit attention to improving spatial thinking skills in girls, including explaining that spatial skills are not innate but can be developed (National Research Council, 2006) encouraging young people to engage in learning activities that use spatial thinking skills (Hill, Corbett, St. Rose, 2010) and using geospatial visualizations, tools, and representations to promote critical thinking, analysis, and reasoning to address problem solving (U.S. Department of Labor, Employment Training Administration, 2010) A recent meta analysis conducted by Utall et al. (2013) concluded that spatially enriched curricula succeeds in increasing STEM performance and participation. The use of GIS to investigate the Earth and environmental sciences spatially during classroom investigations has proved effective in the development of accurate scientific understandings about complex Earth and environmental science concepts with secondary learners (Bednarz, 2004; Bodzin Fu, 2014; Bodzin, Fu, Kulo, Peffer, 2014; Edelson, Pitts, Salierno, Sherin, 2006; Kulo Bodzin, 2013; NRC, 2006) However, geospatial thinking and reasoning are not widely addressed in science education curricula (Black, 2005; Mathewson, 1999; Wai et al. 2009) Therefore, development and implementation of curriculum to better enable the application of geospatial thinking and reasoning in science education are needed (Baker, Palmer, Kerski, 2009; Bodzin, 2011) Additional studies are needed to understand which types of pedagogical implementation supports may help teachers more effectively implement successful pedagogical approaches to promote student geospatial thinking skills (Baker et al. 2015) Effectively teaching about geoscience topics that are geospatial in nature requires specific technological pedagogical content knowledge (Mishra Koehler, 2006) and implementation supports to incorporate geospatial technologies into the classroom. GIS is a geospatial technology that can be used to promote geospatial thinking through the analysis of geo referenced data and imagery. Teaching science with geospatial technologies involves geospatial science pedagogical content knowledge, a specific type of technological pedagogical content knowledge. Science teachers with geospatial science pedagogical content knowledge have a more complete understanding of the complex interplay between science pedagogical content knowledge and geospatial pedagogical content knowledge and can teach science using appropriate pedagogical methods and geospatial technologies (Bodzin, Peffer, Kulo, 2012) This knowledge involves understanding how to model geospatial data exploration and analysis techniques and how to scaffold students' geospatial thinking and analysis skills effectively. The idea of geospatial pedagogical content knowledge transcends content disciplinary boundaries, since geospatial technology can interact with other disciplineContemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 16(3) 350 based pedagogical content (for example, geography and history) in ways that may produce effective teaching and student learning opportunities. Unfortunately, many teachers have not had professional development experiences that foster sufficient geospatial pedagogical content knowledge to implement Earth and environmental science curriculum using geospatial technologies to promote both Earth science learning and the development of geospatial thinking skills. In some U.S. school districts, the available time within a school year to provide in service science teachers with high quality, face to face professional development to adopt new science education technology integrated curriculum is limited. In recent years, we have partnered with an urban school district in a systemic middle level science curriculum reform effort. During this time, school financial resources were extremely limited, and science teachers were allowed to attend only 2 or 3 days of face toface professional development during the school year. To address this common reality, we developed and implemented an approach to promote teachers' professional growth with curriculum linked professional development supports within the Web based curriculum. In this paper we describe a curriculum linked professional development approach designed to support middle level teachers' understandings about tectonics in addition to supporting their development of geospatial pedagogical content knowledge to teach with a Web GIS. The approach takes into account limited face to face professional development time and, instead, provides substantial pedagogical support within the design of Web based curriculum and teacher support materials. We illustrate the effectiveness of the curriculum materials to simultaneously provide supports for both content and Web based teaching with geospatial technologies. The effectiveness of the curriculum linked professional development approach is presented with a focus on how the curriculum enactment of the Web GIS tectonics investigations and the curriculum support materials provided teachers with professional growth. Designing Curriculum Materials to Support Teachers Curriculum materials can be designed to incorporate professional development opportunities for teachers to assist them with deepening their understandings of science content, in addition to accomplishing instructional goals for their students. This professional development may influence teacher decision making by conveying instructional practices, providing appropriate science content materials, or providing pedagogical implementation ideas (Davis Krajcik, 2005; Davis Varma, 2008) Curriculum designers can develop learning materials that better accommodate instruction by moving away from a one size fits all students instructional model and, instead, providing for flexible adaptations to instructional implementation. Such curriculum designs can provide for different modes of instruction that are important given the diverse nature of students and their abilities in science classrooms. When curriculum materials are expected to take on the role of change agent and transform teacher practice as in a systemic reform initiative the challenges of effective implementation are heightened. Unfortunately, research has shown that teachers face many obstacles when they attempt to use curriculum materials that are based on an instructional approach to teaching and learning that differs from their own experiences (Stein, Grover, Henningsen, 1996) When teachers enact instructional materials that utilize geospatial technologies to support inquiry based learning environments, studies Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 16(3) 351 have shown that they may experience technical issues pertaining to the interface design of software, have time constraints to learn how to use geospatial technologies software applications to teach students effectively, undergo difficulty with integrating the learning materials into their own school curriculum, and lack pedagogical content knowledge conducive to teaching with geospatial technologies in classroom settings (Baker Bednarz, 2003; Patterson, Reeve, Page, 2003; Trautmann MaKinster, 2010) One way of addressing these challenges is to design the curriculum materials to promote the pedagogical design capacity of teachers that is, their ability to perceive and mobilize curriculum materials and resources for effective instructional enactment (Brown, 2009) The concept of pedagogical design capacity means that curriculum materials can be designed in ways to facilitate productive use by teachers to accomplish learning goals. Embedded supports must be included within the curriculum in the form of educative materials features of curriculum materials designed to