What Happens When Birds of a Feather Flock Together?: Planning for Communities of Practice

"Birds of a feather” is a common saying and is used as a metaphor for many interactions. In this presentation, we’ll look at a real life example of flocking behavior to draw lessons that we might apply to learning together as educators in communities of practice. Leave with options for next steps in your own learning that you can explore with POGIL colleagues during the remainder of the conference.

Elyse Eidman-Aadahl is the Executive Director of the National Writing Project (NWP), a network of nearly 175 literacy-focused professional development and research communities located at universities across all 50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Based at the University of California-Berkeley, the NWP leads nationally networked learning and research initiatives for educators working in K-12, university, and out-of-school settings. A recipient of the Hollis Caswell Award for Curriculum Studies, Eidman-Aadahl holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum Theory from the University of Maryland College Park.  Her scholarship includes studies of literacy and learning in the context of our new digital, networked ecology as well as research into how educators of diverse backgrounds research and reason together about this social transformation, literacy, equity, and agency for themselves, their subject areas, and their youth. She is a broadly published author and presenter, well-known for writing books such as Because Digital Writing Matters and Writing for a Change: Boosting Literacy and Learning through Social Action, and for leading large-scale practitioner-research projects.

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Observation Protocol for Teaching in Interactive Classrooms

As educators, when we are facilitating a lesson, we do not always realize how much time we spend on certain actions and interactions as the class progresses.  Classroom observations, made by a colleague, are an essential part of developing and/or improving classroom facilitation.  Classroom observations are useful ways to qualitatively measure the facilitators’ actions and interactions in the classroom, which educators can then use to learn and reflect about their practice.  Many classroom observation protocols have been developed for these purposes.  During this presentation, the POGIL classroom observation protocol called OPTIC will be discussed.

Urik Halliday teaches AP Chemistry and Physics in the Chicago Public Schools. Prior to becoming a science educator, Halliday was employed by the Illinois Department of Public Health, working in its Chicago toxicology lab as an analytical chemist.  He earned a M.S.Ed. in Secondary Science Education from Illinois Institute of Technology, and a B.S in Chemistry from Illinois State University.  Halliday has been an active member of The POGIL Project since 2013.  During the course of his work with The Project, he has led several one-day workshops and three-day summer workshops and also presented sessions at numerous POGIL National Meetings and NCAPPs.  In 2017, Halliday was awarded the POGIL PEACH Award, given to a new practitioner who has made significant and enthusiastic contributions to The Project.  He served on the POGIL Steering Committee and is currently the chairperson of OPTIC—the Classroom Observation Protocol Working Group.

Mind the Gap: Active Learning Improves Equity in STEM Classrooms

Educational inequity remains one of the most persistent and intractable problems in our society, but instructors can play an active role in disrupting these inequities. In this talk, I will share recent work demonstrating that opportunity gaps—differential performance between minoritized students (BIPOC students as well as low-income students) and over-represented students—were reduced by 75% in college STEM courses when instructors incorporated active learning strategies, but only when active learning was implemented in a majority of class time.

Elli Theobald is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. Prior to her current position, she worked as a middle school and high school teacher, completed her Ph.D. in Ecology, and transitioned to Discipline-based Education Research as a postdoctoral student. Currently, the heart of Theobald’s research program revolves around how to be a better teacher, with particular emphasis on how to achieve equity in college-level STEM classes. She uses quantitative and sometimes qualitative approaches to 1) describe inequities; 2) identify instructor and systemic practices that disrupt inequities; and 3) scale equitable practices to all classes in all STEM disciplines.