Supplementary TableAlignment of select RTOP items to components emphasized during the professional development program

RTOP Item and Number / Professional Development Components
1. The instructional strategies and activities respected students’ prior knowledge and the preconceptions inherent therein.
12. Students made predictions, estimations, and/or hypotheses and devised means for testing them (collecting and analyzing data)
22. Students were encouraged to generate conjectures, alternative solution strategies, and/or different ways of interpreting evidence. / Use of the Predict, Observe, Explain model (Gunstone & White, 1981) during the pedagogy and content sessions
Focus on collecting data and analyzing data to form explanations about content during content and pedagogy sessions
2. The lesson was designed to engage students as members of a learning community / Asking students to share predicts and explanations and defend through the development of arguments using the Claim, Evidence, Reasoning (CER) format (McNeil & Krajcik, 2008)
3. In this lesson, student exploration preceded formal presentation / Use of Predict, Observe, Explain model and explicit description of using “phenomena first” when teaching
6. The lesson involved fundamental concepts of the subject
7. The lesson promoted strongly coherent conceptual understanding
8. The teacher had a solid grasp of the subject matter content inherent in the lesson / Content instructors modeled the teaching of content to the teachers through challenging inquiry-based lessons.
Use of a “driving questions” and big ideas that held together the inquiry-based units in many of the content areas
16. Students were involved in the communication of their ideas to others using a variety of means and media.
25. The metaphor “teacher as listener” was very characteristic of this classroom. / Modeled the use of students explaining their data and findings through the use of large post-it notes with drawings, graphs, CER, and computer probe ware (e.g., PASCO force and motion probes, temperature probes and DataStudio software) in content and pedagogy sessions
17. The Teacher’s questions triggered divergent modes of thinking. / Focus on wait time, open-ended questioning techniques, and the use of a driving question in content and pedagogy sessions
18. There was a high proportion of student talk and a significant amount of it occurred between and among students. / Placing teachers in small cooperative groups to talk through predictions and explanations during content and pedagogy sessions
21. Active participation of students was encouraged and valued.
24. The teacher acted as a resource person, working to support and enhance student investigations. / Use of hands-on minds-on inquiry-based investigations in content and pedagogy sessions