The Exploratorium Teacher Institute has been a professional learning center for secondary science teachers since 1984. We bring the inquiry-rich, experiential learning of Exploratorium museum exhibits into school classrooms by working with a community of teachers dedicated to improving science education.
Each year, we work face-to-face with over 1000 teachers, but there are many more who cannot attend our programs. We also work with other professional development providers who are interested in implementing best practices in their own programs. Additionally, new science standards call for a shift in the way science is taught in K-12 classrooms. These standards promote a student-centered, experiential, and equitable approach that supports deep and robust science learning for all students. We wanted to create a way to share our experiential approach developed in partnership with our community of teachers over decades and also give a sense of a workshop experience to those who are not able to visit the museum.
Supporting Science Teachers: Views on Professional Learning is a collection of videos that allows us to further extend our reach beyond the Exploratorium walls. Other providers of science teacher professional development can learn about the core elements of our program through eight short videos that include teacher testimonials. These videos are meant to stimulate those who work with teachers to reflect on their program’s values and how they are designing towards those values and new science standards.
A common practice in teacher professional learning is to review videos of a classroom lesson so a group of teachers can examine and reflect on successful strategies, potential challenges, and how the experience might translate to their own classrooms. Four longer videos on the site document four different Exploratorium Teacher Institute workshop sessions. Viewers can observe how the core elements combine to create a learning experience for teachers. Annotations are provided to highlight moments in which to reflect and analyze the teaching and facilitation moves the instructors employ.
The site documents what we believe is important to the success of our work with teachers but is really meant to be a learning tool. The way one teaches is often a statement of who they are and what they believe to be true about learning; we wanted to create resources that expressed our approach to teaching and learning and provided value to the teacher and professional learning communities. True to the Exploratorium’s vision, we hope other educators will gain an experience through viewing the videos that will ignite reflection, inspiration, and growth in their own work.