Course-Based Teacher Professional Communities (With District and Union Support) at the Center of Three-Dimensional Science Teaching

Abstract

This study focuses on how two school districts managed and changed the instructional core—student learning goals, instructional resources and strategies, and assessments—in their required high school biology course as they responded to new state science standards based on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Biology teachers in both districts had access to NGSS-aligned resources for their classrooms. Interviews with teachers, district science coordinators, and union leaders revealed how district responses were affected by two institutional logics: academic logics included the criteria that teachers used to choose resources and strategies for their classrooms and professional logics included the roles and responsibilities of district professionals. Participants from District A endorsed a common-sense experiential academic logic, which recognized teachers' obligations to meet general criteria for content coverage while using their personal experiences and values to make detailed instructional decisions. They also endorsed a professional logic of privacy and noninterference, which recognized teachers' individual autonomy in making decisions about their classroom instructional cores. In contrast, participants from District B described how district professionals empowered a course-based professional community to make decisions about the instructional core that all biology teachers followed in their own classrooms. We examine how this strategy enabled actions consistent with an instructional improvement logic that supported an NGSS-aligned instructional core in all biology classrooms. We consider the implications of this contrast for teacher learning in organizational settings—the focus of this special issue.