About
ATLAST is funded as an MSP RETA by the National Science Foundation under grant no. EHR-0335328. ATLAST is operated by Horizon Research, Inc. (HRI) in partnership with Project 2061 of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The project is founded on the premise that professional development for science teachers operates with an implicit theory that is largely untested. The theory (depicted graphically below) asserts that professional development brings about changes in teachers' knowledge, which then lead to changes in classroom practice, ultimately improving student achievement.
Testing this theory requires a coherent set of tools, which currently does not exist. Without these tools, professional development providers lack data they need to inform revisions to their program designs and implementations. ATLAST is developing these tools in specific science content areas. The project is creating and disseminating instruments that assess teacher opportunities to learn, and that measure changes in teacher science content knowledge, teacher pedagogical content knowledge, classroom practice, as well as changes in student achievement. Three sets of instruments are being developed, one for each of three science content areas at the middle grades level:
- Force and motion;
- Plate tectonics; and
- Flow of matter and energy in living systems.
The principal investigator of ATLAST is Sean Smith; Iris R. Weiss is the co-principal investigator. HRI, with in-house psychometric expertise, has managed a number of large-scale projects that involved the development of rigorous instruments, and has a wealth of experience in documenting and evaluating the quality of professional development programs. Project 2061, the author of Benchmarks for Science Literacy, brings a profound understanding of the target benchmarks and a wealth of experience developing student assessments around the benchmarks.
Tools created by ATLAST will enable professional development providers to monitor the effectiveness of their interventions. Tools will be disseminated through: (1) a web-based handbook for tool creation; (2) invited conferences; (3) internships for doctoral students and post-doctoral students; (4) presentations and workshops at annual meetings of professional organizations; (5) journal articles; and (6) a project web-site, including a discussion forum.
