Developing Diagnostic Teaching Kits To Improve Personalized Teaching

The study of chemistry in Israeli high schools, as with mathematics and physics, has also suffered a decline in the last decade, however at a more modest rate of just over 10%, from 6,976 five-unit graduates in 2007 to 6,243 in 2012. The profile of a chemistry student has unique characteristics – more than 65% are female, half are Arab and very few are religious Jews. The typical chemistry classroom is highly diversified as many students come from three and four-unit classes in mathematics.

Since 2012, the number of graduates has dramatically increased by 30% to 8,160 in 2016. This increase is a result of the training of new teachers, the opening of chemistry tracks in schools, and a policy encouraging students to matriculate with a science major. Now, the task is to further expand the pipeline of students and to assist teachers in helping struggling students persevere with their studies.

To address this challenge, the Weizmann Institute is proposing to develop 45 teaching kits for personalized teaching, including diagnostic assignments and teachers guides explaining how to respond to the evaluation of the student’s understanding, and to different student reactions and interactions with the assignments. The teaching kits will cover the entire chemistry curriculum from 10^th-12^th grade and will rely on a model which will be imported from special needs education called “Responsiveness to Intervention”, whereby the student progresses to the next level based on his or her response to the previous level.

The kits will be developed, pilot tested, refined and deployed in classrooms, in collaboration with the professional learning communities (PLC) program for chemistry teachers. Launched in 2015, the PLC program is now operating seven communities for 120 teachers, who meet regularly to discuss student learning and difficulties. The PLC program is run by the Weizmann Institute with support from the Trump Foundation and is already engaged in developing diagnostic assignments. The teaching kits will rely on these assignments and add ‘treatment’ protocols to them to enable teachers to adapt their instruction to individual students in light of the results of their diagnostics.

Over the first year of the program, the development team will adapt and fine-tune the RTI pedagogical model for personalized chemistry teaching, while developing the kits, together with the teacher communities. Throughout the program, teachers from the communities will experiment with the assignments in their classrooms, in order to provide feedback, and improve them. They plan to create 45 teaching kits over three years, in Hebrew and Arabic. Some of the material for the Arab students and teachers will be developed especially, as a significant number of community members are from Arab schools.

At least 70 teachers will gain in-depth experience with the kits, using two or more in their classes and providing feedback, while receiving coaching on how to use the kits from the Weizmann pedagogic team. In addition, 200 chemistry teachers will be exposed to the personalized learning approach and the teaching kits themselves.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 246