ABSTRACT: The work presented builds on a multiyear effort to study the implementation
and adaptation of Kids as Global Scientists (KGS), an inquiry-based, technology-rich
middle school learning environment enacted simultaneously in hundreds of classrooms
across the nation. Two groups of teachers participated in this study. One group consists
of “maverick” teachers: those distributed across the nation that find us and customize our
program to their needs without systematic professional development. This group of teachers
tends to work in schools with a relatively rich fund of resources and supports. Another
group—urban teachers—resulted from a recent partnership betweenKGSand teachers from
a large, high-poverty urban school district. We provide these teachers with targeted professional
development to help them overcome constraints common to their schools. This
study provides profiles of both maverick and urban teachers, and then examines teacher
and student data from five focus classrooms that were successful in implementing KGS.
In all cases, successful classrooms were defined as those where students made significant
positive gains on open-ended and multiple-choice assessments. The focus classrooms consisted
of three classrooms from urban teachers in high-poverty environments and two classrooms
from maverick teachers in middle-class suburban environments. The paper discusses
the need for research that provides multiple exemplars of classroom science inquiry that
are realized through large-scale enactments responsive to diverse learning environments.
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