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This research investigates a design and development approach to improving science teachers’ access to effective professional development (PD) in a fully online, asynchronous environment. Working with a small number of teachers, this study explores how a design combining social capital mechanisms with essential teacher learning and PD characteristics supported teachers’ abilities to participate in the online course and collaboratively build knowledge. Teachers’ perceptions of their experiences both in surveys and interviews demonstrated high satisfaction with the quality and usability of the PD, including positive beliefs related to the social capital elements of tie quality, depth of interaction, and access to expertise. Further transactivity analyses of their interactions in course discussions showed higher levels of collaborative discourse resulting from prompts that specifically targeted the exchange of information over those that asked teachers to reflect about their content understanding or their classroom practice. Implications for this design for asynchronous online PD approaches to reach more teachers are discussed.

We present a curriculum and instruction framework for computer-supported teaching and learning about complex systems in high school science classrooms. This work responds to a need in K-12 science education research and practice for the articulation of design features for classroom instruction that can address the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) recently launched in the USA. We outline the features of the framework, including curricular relevance, cognitively rich pedagogies, computational tools for teaching and learning, and the development of content expertise, and provide examples of how the framework is translated into practice. We follow this up with evidence from a preliminary study conducted with 10 teachers and 361 students, aimed at understanding the extent to which students learned from the activities. Results demonstrated gains in students’ complex systems understanding and biology content knowledge. In interviews, students identified influences of various aspects of the curriculum and instruction framework on their learning.

The recent next generation science standards in the United States have emphasized learning about complex systems as a core feature of science learning. Over the past 15 years, a number of educational tools and theories have been investigated to help students learn about complex systems; but surprisingly, little research has been devoted to identifying the supports that teachers need to teach about complex systems in the classroom. In this paper, we aim to address this gap in the literature. We describe a 2-year professional development study in which we gathered data on teachers' abilities and perceptions regarding the delivery of computer-supported complex systems curricula. We present results across the 2 years of the project and demonstrate the need for particular instructional supports to improve implementation efforts, including providing differentiated opportunities to build expertise and addressing teacher beliefs about whether computational-model construction belongs in the science classroom. Results from students' classroom experiences and learning over the 2 years are offered to further illustrate the impact of these instructional supports.

Purpose The overarching goal of the research is to understand strategies that can support utility and access to high-quality teacher professional development (PD). This study aims to examine the design and delivery of an online asynchronous course for science teachers using the edX massively online open course (MOOC) platform. The conceptual framework considers three areas of research: high-quality PD characteristics for K12 teachers, the development of social capital and known challenges in MOOC and computer-supported collaborative learning and participation. Design/methodology/approach This is an empirical mixed-methods study that details the design of the PD course and implementation strategies that instantiate the conceptual framework. The authors collected three data sources from 41 teachers who completed the course. These included post course satisfaction surveys, teacher semi structured interviews and discussion board contributions. Findings Survey findings revealed high satisfaction among teachers in the areas of overall course design, module construction and delivery and usability of materials in teaching. Interview findings showed positive perceptions of the social capital framing in developing tie quality, trust, depth of interactions and access to expertise. Analyses of discussion board contributions also demonstrated high degrees of information exchange resulting from prompts intentionally constructed to foster collaboration. Practical implications This study offers a set of strategies to build networked teacher PD communities in asynchronous online PD platforms and shows promising evidence of addressing quality and access issues. Social implications Designing experiences to build teachers’ social capital shows promising potential to support high quality PD that may, in turn, raise the quality of science education for students and classrooms both locally in the US and globally. Originality/value The conceptual framework provides a novel approach to theorizing and operationalizing best practices for teacher PD and online participation.

Efforts to improve mathematics education have led educators and researchers to not only study the nature of proficiency, beliefs, and practices in mathematics learning and teaching, but also identify and assess possible influences on students' and teachers' proficiencies, beliefs, and practices in learning and teaching mathematics. The complexity of these topics has fascinated researchers from various backgrounds, including psychologists, cognitive or learning scientists, mathematicians, and mathematics educators.