Systems in need of transformation can promote inequities. Educators in such systems are frequently asked to implement state and local initiatives that are not grounded in a common vision for teaching and learning or that do not cohere with one another. This incoherence can reinforce educational inequities and provides an extra challenge for schools that are already struggling with accountability pressures.

Systems of science education across the United States, have been engaged in such educational transformation since the publication of A Framework for K-12 Science Education (Framework; National Research Council, 2012). Guidance to support the implementation of this potentially transformative vision for science education calls on education leaders to cultivate partnerships and networks to support implementation (National Research Council, 2015). This includes partnerships across districts, with professional development providers, with science education researchers, and with informal science educators and cultural institutions in communities. Such partnerships are essential, given the complexity of science education and magnitude of changes to science teaching and learning demanded by the Framework.

A Framework for K-12 Science Education

The Framework communicated a bold new vision for science education that laid the groundwork for the development of standards which have been adopted or adapted now by the majority of states and districts across the U.S. The vision called for science teaching centered on explaining phenomena and solving real-world problems in culturally responsive ways, using disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts. In it authors also called for equitable science learning which centers teaching on students’ interests, experiences, and questions, and focuses on phenomena and problems that relate to community priorities and students’ own cultural practices.

The focus on connecting to interests and identities of students was one of several strategies called out in the Framework for promoting equity in science education. The Framework itself did not offer a single definition of equity, but emphasized several different equity goals, including broadening participation in science, promoting science and engineering as tools for promoting justice, and supporting educational achievement for students who have been historically underserved. In Chapter 11, the Framework outlined several strategies for promoting equity grounded in research, focusing particularly on culture-based pedagogies. These culture-based pedagogies take many forms (e.g., Bang, Faber, Gurneau, Marin, & Soto, 2016; González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012; Rodriguez, 1998; Tzou & Bell, 2010), but all emphasize the need for educators to develop knowledge of students’ experiences and ways of knowing connected to their cultural and community practices, and identity, and then to center these throughout instruction as sense-making processes support desired science learning goals. The culture-based pedagogies also emphasize the need to examine science and engineering themselves as cultural endeavors—and to broaden what often gets counted as science and engineering (Barton, et al., 200x; Bell, 2004; Gutiérrez & Calabrese Barton, 2015) and which efforts around the globe, presently and historically, get framed as being part of science and engineering endeavors (Rodriguez & Bell, 2018).

Leadership matters when it comes to implementing this vision. Without intentional leadership in states, districts, schools, and informal education institutions, there is little chance of the Framework’s vision becoming a reality. Individual leaders cannot bring about the kinds of changes to systems that are necessary to address inequities that limit some groups of students’ opportunities to engage in meaningful science learning. They must engage supportive and diverse teams, committed to sustained implementation efforts that can disrupt inequitable systems and develop transformed infrastructures that can be adapted to promote coherent and liberatory science education (Bell, 2019). Without tools and resources for those teams to use, there’s little chance that teachers, other school leaders, parents, and community members will see how they can contribute to realizing the promise of the Framework’s vision for students.

Research-Practice Partnerships

Research-practice partnerships are long-term collaborations between research and practice to promote educational equity (Farrell, Penuel, Daniel, & Coburn, 2019). Partnerships accomplish their aims by working together to build and use ideas, tools, and findings from research in ways that leverage diverse forms of expertise. Partnerships are powerful supports for science education leaders for several reasons.

First, partnerships with researchers can extend the expertise and resources available to leaders. Researchers who bring knowledge of effective professional learning strategies can apply that knowledge to help leaders design professional development that meets the needs of their school, district, or state. And, researchers can connect leaders to other researchers with expertise in areas outside their own.

Second, partnerships can support research on implementation as it unfolds. That is, a research partner can answer questions about how implementation is going where and for whom, as well as what policies and practices are associated with higher quality implementation. Such evidence can be used to guide efforts to improve equity of implementation.

Finally, research partners can provide legitimacy to efforts by leaders who sometimes stand alone in their organizations as advocates for equity in science education, and leaders’ contributions  are essential to ensuring the usability and relevance of resources that researchers have taken the lead in developing.

ACESSE Partnership

The Advancing Coherent and Equitable Systems of Science Education (ACESSE, or “access”) project is a research-practice partnership between the Council of State Science Supervisors (CSSS), the University of Washington (UW-ISME), and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder). The practice partner in ACESSE, the Council of State Science Supervisors, is the professional association, comprised of the leaders in state education agencies from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. Territories. The two university partners in ACESSE, UW-ISME and CU-Boulder, are both centers for learning sciences work with emphasis on equity and science.

Since 2016, the ACESSE project partnership has engaged leaders, educators and researchers in design based collaborative research, development, and sharing of strategies and resources to make science education more coherent and equitable. The work and subsequent products are grounded in the vision of the Framework. These guides are funded by phase 1 ACESSE funding that went from 2016-2019 and focused on formative assessment as a leverage point for improvement (ACESSE I: NSF grant #1561300). ACESSE I funding centered on 13 states as deeper research partners, though there was sharing and learning done across the whole of the CSSS network at several points. Phase 2 occurred between 2019-2023 with a focus on the adaptation of instructional materials as a leverage point for improvement (ACESSE II: NSF grant #1920249). ACESSE II funding invited in all of the CSSS membership as research partners throughout all phases of the collaborative work, with different partners engaging in varied ways.

A number of the resources developed through ACESSE were piloted within school districts in two other research-practice partnerships. One, the Inquiry Hub (iHub) partnership, is a partnership between Denver Public Schools and the University of Colorado Boulder. That partnership’s work has focused on developing high school curriculum units anchored in phenomena that includes a system of assessments to inform teaching. The iHub partnership’s resources were co-designed with classroom teachers, district leaders, and researchers from both the University of Colorado Boulder and Northwestern University.

In addition, the Partnership for Science and Engineering Practices, brought together Seattle Public Schools, Renton School District, the Institute for Systems Biology, and the UW-ISME to support NGSS Implementation across two school districts. This was a three-year effort that was aimed at co-designing and adapting curriculum such that it encompassed three-dimensional, equitable science instruction, with a focus on: modeling, argumentation, and explanation practices; three-dimensional formative assessments; discourse supports with a focus on ELL students; culturally responsive approaches to instruction; and phenomena-based storylining. Additionally, through this partnership, resources were developed around three-dimensional and equitable science instruction that were shared with the broader science teaching community in the form of practitioner briefs (STEM Teaching Tools).

Need for Practical Guidance and Tools

The ACESSE project has, and continues to, built significant knowledge, strategies, and resources to inform and foster coherent and equitable science education. Such work can be found in research journals, practice briefs, professional learning modules, and other emerging forms (http://cosss.org/ACESSE). In the ACESSE Practice Guidance documents (referred to as Guides) we have organized many of the leadership focused resources into a series of strategies grounded in case examples, reflections for localizing and contextualizing these strategies, and workbooks for details on engaging in the strategies in your own context. The purpose of the ACESSE Guides is to equip science education leaders with tools and associated knowledge to envision pathways for creating a more equitable and coherent system of science education for students. These resources also integrate examples from leaders who have chosen to do this work and the tools they’ve utilized to build capacity for others to engage.

The guides build both on the Framework and on recommendations for implementing its vision (National Research Council, 2014, 2015) in four key ways. They aim to provide concrete steps leaders can take to build inclusive state teams that are focused on bringing about systemic change. These steps are intended to be useful for leaders in state education agencies, district offices, and schools, as well as for educators and administrators looking to lead efforts of change within their schools and departments. Additionally, the guides include links to open education resources for professional development that can support implementation the vision of the Framework including culture-based pedagogies. These resources focus on improving classroom-based formative assessment as a high-leverage strategy for helping teachers grasp the changes needed to implement the vision of equitable science teaching and learning outlined in the Framework. The guides also presents case studies of successful efforts by state and district leaders to use resources, outlined in this guide, in their states or districts to promote systems change. These studies also acknowledge the tensions and potential problems that may arise when attempting to do this work. Finally, the protocols, tools, and resources shared reflect ideas about equity and justice in science education that extend perspectives presented in the Framework. Specifically, they support de-settling or troubling historical notions of who can do science, as well as what counts as ‘scientific’ sensemaking in the classroom.

The guides are organized around a key premise: implementing the vision of the Framework requires a system in which policies, people, and practices are all organized around a common vision of equitable science teaching and learning. They are a resource to address a major need for leaders in the field of science education for leveraging the vision of the Framework in planning for systemic changes. Leaders need science-specific resources for strategic planning to help bridge past reforms to the current wave of reform focused on teaching science-as-practice (Furtak & Penuel, 2019). Given the magnitude of changes demanded of science education, not surprisingly leaders have asked: “Where do we start?” and “Who do we work with to effect change?” The guides provide possible answers to both questions, which can be brought into alignment with local school, district, and state priorities. The guides have been designed to complement other implementation guides for the Framework vision; it differs by being focused directly on formative assessment implementation and by the inclusion of broadly usable resources to accomplish this work. These resources have been used across dozens of contexts and were developed through a rigorous process involving waves of collaborative design to support the spreading of tools and ideas across the breadth of education.

These guides provide leaders with much needed measurement tools and guidance for analyzing data on implementation and early outcomes, helping them better gauge any progress being made or not made towards achieving a vision for science teaching and learning outlined in the Framework. Often leaders only have access to state test scores to measure progress. However, state assessment data cannot be utilized as a measure for assessing implementation efforts and cannot be utilized to determine shifts in vision and beliefs about science teaching and learning required to inform the changes called for current science education reform efforts.

Organization of Practice Guides

The guides build upon one another, and leaders can use the guide to organize a cycle of organizing for change in their systems. Throughout the book leaders will find embedded tools, activities, and resources to help them actually do this work. Some of the doing of the work is in cultivating a critical consciousness — developing thought patterns of reflection and re-evaluation based on commitments to justice. The activities are short, but revisiting the questions and getting in the habit of regularly revisiting them is key if leaders are committed to leading for equity and toward justice. Specific goals of each practice guide are described briefly below.

Guide 1: Centering Vision in Educational Reform Efforts – describes the work of collaboratively defining visions of educational reform that can guide implementation efforts. This guide lays out three core commitments needed for effective science leaders and offers some guidance for engaging in strategic leadership development.

Guide 2: Building Shared Visions of Educational Improvement – addresses two key questions: How can varied visions of equitable science education in a given state system be identified, and how do such visions align with the Framework?  This guide outlines what constitutes a target vision of equitable science education as described in the Framework. It then provides background on the varied ways in which this vision may exist within local contexts due to varied socio-historical contexts of science education across the U.S.. Examples of how shared visions have been developed in several contexts are described to provide some concrete ideas of how this might resolve tensions with navigating target and existing visions of equitable science education. Finally, the guide concludes with details of guiding principles and resources such as vision surveys that can be used for engaging in vision work.

Guide 3: Creating, Building, and Mobilizing Networks for Educational Implementation – focuses on the question: How are, or should, various networks of state level participants be composed so they can contribute to efforts to create equitable change in science education? The rationale behind taking a network approach to such work is explained followed by the identification of key features of collaborative work across networks. Examples of district and state-level teams engaging in identifying, building, and mobilizing networks are described, specifically highlighting tools such as actor network mapping to support such work. The guide describes a process for developing an equity-oriented  aim statement as early step to building a shared vision with a team. The guide concludes with lessons learned to inform future work in engaging networks.

Guide 4: Setting a Direction for Your Network – aims to answer two critical questions regarding coherence. How can coherence and incoherence within science education systems impact equitable learning opportunities for students? and Where can leaders begin and continue the work of crafting coherence in their systems?  The guide begins by presenting an image of educational systems as complex and constantly changing.  Within such systems, science leaders need to know how and when components and processes can be changed, and who has authority to do so. A good leverage point is one where leaders have some direct influence, but over time, a  leader may indirectly influence components of systems  they have little authority over. The guide presents case studies of leaders who begin to use formative assessment as a leverage point for influencing state-wide assessment systems, as well as curriculum. It also presents a case study of a district that chose curriculum development as its leverage point. The guide introduces three tools to help science leadership teams find an initial focus for their work: Actor-Network Maps and Driver Diagrams, and a Problem of Practice Protocol. Together, these can help teams clarify equity goals, develop strategy, and analyze how the current system of science education is functioning.

Guide 5: Developing Resources to Support Work Towards Equity and Coherence in Science – answers the question: How can resources be designed that support the professional development efforts of science leaders to promote equity and coherence? It focuses on ways that science leaders have leveraged collaborative design (co-design) practices and resources to build capacity in national, regional and local networks. We elaborate on co-design practices involving teams developing, testing, and revising resources together, as opposed to implementing resources others have designed. This shared work can be a powerful tool for building coherence and equity within science systems. This guide is aimed to help science education leaders identify ways that they can create a shared vision of equitable science education and move towards that vision through collaborative practices in local contexts. guide 5 includes practical examples how ACESSE tools and resources have been leveraged at different levels of the science system to support, and scale work within different contexts and settings. The section concludes with a description of the current ACESSE PD resources.]

How can science leaders use professional development  resources with teachers to build coherence within their state systems? It focuses on how ACESSE professional learning resources were designed through a collaborative design (co-design) process and how those resources and the co-design process itself supported equity and coherence in local, regional, and cross-state networks. The guide describes the co-design process that was used to design the ACESSE resources and discuss the different practices that involved teams developing, testing, and revising resources together, as opposed to implementing resources others have designed. This guide also discusses each resource that was developed through the ACESSE network and how they have supported the varied pathways that state leaders take to create a shared vision of equitable science education and move towards that vision in local contexts.

Guide 6: Is What You’re Doing Working?: Using Practical Measures to Understand Change –   asks how do we know if we are on track, and what can we do if we are not making progress? One strategy for analyzing progress toward goals carefully is practical measures. Practical measures enable practitioners to understand what is happening on the “ground” and to design actionable steps based on this data. Through practical measures, one can get a deeper and fuller account of implementation, as it is unfolding over time and  across contexts. This guide describes how practitioners can design, use, and interpret the data from practical measures in education contexts. It introduces  sample practical measures, along with case studies that illustrate how to use a Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to improve performance on practical measures.

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