NGSX: The Next Generation Science Exemplar Professional Learning Project
NGSX (Next Generation Science Exemplar System) is a blended model of professional learning for science educators, now active in multiple states and districts across the United States. Participants – K-12 teachers, instructional leaders, administrators or preservice faculty – engage in a facilitated face-to-face study group model supported by a high functioning, on-line, web-based platform that offers numerous pathways of learning guided by highly skilled NGSX facilitators.
Key design principles foundational to NGSX:
Organize all study group learning around progressive sensemaking of phenomena, academic productive talk, reasoning with evidence and equity and access to knowledge building strategies and deep engagement with video-based cases of student and teacher learning.
Organize teacher study groups to support knowledge building and confidence in integrating reforms in their own practice.
Organize administrator study groups to focus on science, student thinking, new instructional strategies aligned with reforms in science teaching and learning.
Organize facilitator study groups to prepare future NGSX facilitators to work with study groups at the local, state or national level to help districts and states go to scale with the NGSX model of professional learning.
Knowledge-Building Facilitation
Jean Moon in collaboration with Sarah Michaels, Professor of Education at Clark University and Tidemark Institute Associate, are engaged in developing a framework that repositions the work of teacher leaders in professional learning contexts, especially in NGSX, to become Facilitators. Teacher leaders facilitating new models of professional learning like NGSX need preparation beyond learning about the reforms put forward in the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core.
As Facilitators of other teachers’ learning they need skills in using productive talk moves to build and sustain a culture of talk that supports agency and progressive knowledge building among teachers. Importantly, this kind of professional learning prepares teachers to transfer these skills to their classroom, working with their students to build their own agency as a learner. Likewise, Facilitators need to become skillful in working with epistemic or knowledge-building tools such as epistemic mapping, discussion mapping, strategic questioning tools as well as charting mechanisms that make thinking public such as a driving question board or summary table.
We see learning as a social and cognitive process that engages adults and students in a participatory and collaborative process that shapes a learning community. Facilitators have a major role in shaping this kind of community and modeling this kind of community building for teachers.
Educative Video Conference
Tidemark Institute joined Clark University and Northwestern University in partnership with the education division of WGBH in Boston, to plan and host a working conference at WGBH – the role of educative video in setting a new agenda for professional learning for teachers and administrators. Throughout the conference the role of video in providing educative images of students and educators working to make shifts in learning and teaching was examined and debated. Evidence suggests that high quality video-based cases of classrooms and episodes of professional learning may be critical for teachers in re-learning their practice as well as preparing administrators to understand this process of re-learning. Likewise, video is being positioned as a multi-faceted knowledge-building tool critical to increasing analytical skills among teachers and administrators. This conference was supported by the Spencer Foundation.
LEAPS of IMAGINATION, under the creative direction of Nancy Frohlich Harris, brings mentors artists into public school classrooms in Maine to promote art exploration and connected thinking, giving children the chance to let their imaginations soar. Program goals are tailored to student interests, linking literacy, science and geography themes into in-depth art experiences. Working closely with classroom teachers, artists draw from existing curricula to connect what students are experiencing and learning with their exploration of many different mediums of artistic expression.
NGSX (Next Generation Science Exemplar System) is a blended model of professional learning for science educators, now active in multiple states and districts across the United States. Participants – K-12 teachers, instructional leaders, administrators or preservice faculty – engage in a facilitated face-to-face study group model supported by a high functioning, on-line, web-based platform that offers numerous pathways of learning guided by highly skilled NGSX facilitators.
Jean Moon in collaboration with Sarah Michaels, Professor of Education at Clark University and Tidemark Institute Associate, are engaged in developing a framework that repositions the work of teacher leaders in professional learning contexts, especially in NGSX, to become Facilitators. Teacher leaders facilitating new models of professional learning like NGSX need preparation beyond learning about the reforms put forward in the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core.
Tidemark Institute joined Clark University and Northwestern University in partnership with the education division of WGBH in Boston, to plan and host a working conference at WGBH – the role of educative video in setting a new agenda for professional learning for teachers and administrators. Throughout the conference the role of video in providing educative images of students and educators working to make shifts in learning and teaching was examined and debated. Evidence suggests that high quality video-based cases of classrooms and episodes of professional learning may be critical for teachers in re-learning their practice as well as preparing administrators to understand this process of re-learning. Likewise, video is being positioned as a multi-faceted knowledge-building tool critical to increasing analytical skills among teachers and administrators. This conference was supported by the Spencer Foundation.
LEAPS of IMAGINATION, under the creative direction of Nancy Frohlich Harris, brings mentors artists into public school classrooms in Maine to promote art exploration and connected thinking, giving children the chance to let their imaginations soar. Program goals are tailored to student interests, linking literacy, science and geography themes into in-depth art experiences. Working closely with classroom teachers, artists draw from existing curricula to connect what students are experiencing and learning with their exploration of many different mediums of artistic expression.
