Practitioner-reported Needs for Enacting, Implementing, and Adopting OpenSciEd Curriculum Materials: Updated Version

OpenSciEd curriculum materials and professional learning resources are Creative Commons licensed, freely available, and aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This report offers direction to researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and developers by identifying OpenSciEd practitioners’ most urgent needs, the factors driving these needs, promising approaches for addressing these needs, and implications for OpenSciEd-enabled research. We gathered survey responses from 155 teachers and leaders and conducted focus group interviews with 28 of the survey respondents. Our analysis indicated three broad challenge areas related to district adoption and implementation, classroom enactment and engagement, and obtaining evidence of NGSS-based student outcomes. We also identified seven themes related to supporting OpenSciEd practitioners through research, development, and innovation: (1) access to and benefits of professional learning, (2) supporting teacher agency, collaboration, and management, (3) improving teacher capacity to enact OpenSciEd, (4) meeting students’ needs, (5) shifting classroom culture, (6) enabling formative assessment practices, and (7) access to assessment resources. Notably, professional learning and other supports for teachers appear to address root causes of many challenges experienced by practitioners. More generally, we see a need for research that would elaborate how adoption and implementation of OpenSciEd could drive system-level change in science education.