Effective professional development experiences that support teachers as learners of scientific inquiry has been a sought-after goal for nearly 50 years in the science education community, yet inquiry as a pedagogy has not been widely attained (Loucks-Horsley et al. 2010). Evidence of the lack of inquiry being taught in the classroom is seen in the 2012 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results which reported that most students of all ages across the United States were unable to demonstrate a deep understanding of science when they performed science investigations (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES] 2012). Although students were able to answer multiple-choice content questions correctly, they struggled when trying to explain their reasoning for selecting the correct choice using evidence. For 4th graders, 71 % could identify the correct conclusion about volume changes when ice melted into water, but only 15 % could support their correct conclusion with evidence (NCES). Engaging in inquiry in the science classroom can help students to think scientifically (Duschl and Grandy 2013) which offers opportunities they might not otherwise have in developing skills and knowledge about the role of evidence in supporting conclusions.

Unfortunately, the majority of efforts toward professional development of teachers in the subject of science have not produced teachers who are inquiry-based (Gerard et al. 2011) nor have they had a major effect on student learning, particularly at the elementary level (Hanuscin et al. 2010; NCES 2012). A meta-analysis of effects of teacher professional development on gains in student achievement completed by The Council of Chief State School Officers (2009) showed that professional development programs focused on producing inquiry-based teachers had small to negligible effects on students, and teachers tended not to implement inquiry-based methods after the professional development. Although professional development programs have taken into account contextual factors in teaching and learning (Loucks-Horsley et al. 2003), linkages from theory to practice (Brundage and Mackeracher 1980), and reflection on student learning artifacts to evaluate teaching (Gerard et al. 2010; Trautmann and MaKinster 2010), many programs overlooked the perspective that in professional development settings, teachers are students. A close analysis of teacher learning processes including cognitive and non-cognitive factors could give insight for improvements of professional development so teachers could apply deep rather than surface learning skills as recommended by Kartika (2007) and Wingate (2006). Further, studies of professional development efforts demonstrated that some teachers have more success than others when learning effective teaching techniques (Author et al. 2015; Dickson 2002; Rubin and Norman 1992), but do not offer specific explanations to why this occurs or ways to differentiate professional development experiences for teachers based on readiness to learn.

Zimmerman’s (2000) self-regulated learning theory (SRL) was adopted for this study as a lens through which teacher learning could be exposed. Self-regulated learning provided a pronounced structure for processes that explain how learners are motivated, aware of their own tactics for learning, and how they react behaviorally to feedback. An SRL framework can be used as a tool through which teacher learning can be communicated to both the teacher and for the professional development instructor so that all parties are aware of learning tactics at the time they are being implemented. Since teaching about inquiry-based instruction is particularly difficult, self-regulated learning theory fit the need for a strong conceptual framework from which teacher learning could be elicited, reflected upon, and further informed. Educators have long been interested in motivation of students and students’ ability to self-regulate learning. However, attention to motivational and self-regulatory abilities of teachers as they learn how to teach during professional development experiences is equally important.

Zimmerman (2008) pointed out the strengths of microanalysis for identifying specific processes in which learners engaged while they were actively involved in the task. SRL microanalysis divided the measurement of the processes that composed the three phases of SRL temporally by measuring processes of forethought before a well-defined learning task occurs, measuring processes of performance during the learning task, and measuring processes of self-reflection as the learner responds to feedback on the task. In doing so, SRL microanalysis can obtain a picture of the key SRL processes being employed (or not) within the same time frame of the engagement (or not) of the processes. Not only do SRL microanalysis techniques capture the phenomenon of learning from a process perspective (Winne and Perry 2000), but these techniques have been useful for both measurement and intervention of SRL strategies (Panadero et al. 2015). By answering the directed questions during a SRL microanalysis, learners have been cued in to important processes for learning and have become more aware of their own processes. Also from these baseline data obtained in SRL microanalysis, instructors have coached learners to improve their use of strategies and tactics (Cleary 2011). SRL microanalysis has been used to improve performance in learners in the medical education field (Brydges and Butler 2012; Durning et al. 2011), in science education (Author et al. 2010; Cleary and Zimmerman 2004), and sports contexts (Cleary et al. 2006). Within a context of subject matter learning, self-regulatory learning (SRL) strategies within a professional development experiences have been found to impact teacher self-regulation (Borman et al. 2008), and have promise to enhance positive learning features in professional development experiences such as self-efficacy (Bandura 2002; Zimmerman 2008). Since elementary teachers need to learn both content and skills in an efficient manner during professional development courses, SRL microanalysis could be used as a tool to enhance the performance of teachers learning about skill-based information, such learning how to conduct inquiry-based teaching, by instructing and assessing teacher learning processes. The purpose of this study was to examine self-regulatory learning cycles that elementary teachers experience as they prepare to learn, while engaged in learning about inquiry, and as they reflect on their learning and to examine ways that SRL microanalysis techniques could help professional development instructors inform instruction. This information could point to learning processes that assist elementary teachers in developing their science inquiry teaching skills, indicate ways to improve professional development experiences and ultimately improve student learning in science.

Theoretical framework

Self-regulated learners

Self-regulated learners are aware of what they know, are strategic in their approach to learning, and attribute their successes and failures in learning to their own processes rather than any uncontrollable factor or innate talent (Zimmerman 1986, 1990, 2008). Self-regulated learning interventions have shown to be successful in a wide variety of settings and contexts (Bembenutty et al. 2013). For example, using self-regulated learning strategies has led to improved performance in skill-based activities such as using social network systems (Cho and Cho 2013), basketball free throws (Cleary et al. 2006), and dart throwing (Kitsantas et al. 2000). Self-regulated learning techniques have also been used to improve diverse areas related to academic learning such as intrinsic motivation (Ryan et al. 1984), academic studying (Thomas and Rohwer 1986), classroom interaction (Rohrkemper 1989; Wang and Peverly 1986), use of instructional media (Kitsantas and Dabbagh 2010), metacognitive engagement (Corno and Mandinach 1983), and self-monitoring learning (Ghatala 1986; Paris et al. 1984). Instructional support for learners’ SRL processes have also been related to improvements in various subject matter domains such as medical education (Brydges and Butler 2012), mathematics education (Cheema and Kitsantas 2013), science education (Author et al. 2010; DiBenedetto and Zimmerman 2013; Hiller and Kitsantas 2014), problem-based learning (English and Kitsantas 2013), and writing (Zimmerman and Kitsantas 2002). Since the application of self-regulated learning theory has been used successfully to support a variety of contexts and learning domains, it has potential to illuminate improvements and challenges that elementary teachers face when learning about teaching inquiry science in professional development settings.

Self-regulated learners engage in three phases during a learning cycle: forethought, performance, and self-reflection (Fig. 1) (adapted from Zimmerman 2000). The forethought phase sets the stage for action such as analyzing tasks (goal setting and strategic planning) and motivational factors (self-efficacy, goal orientation, task value). The performance phase includes processes that occur during the learning task such as focusing on the task and self-monitoring. The self-reflection phase refers to the processes that occur after the performance efforts which influence a person’s response to the action. Because self-regulated learners continue to cycle through the self-regulation feedback loops, prior experiences with processes have the potential to influence subsequent cycles of learning. Learners who are aware of their own processes of learning can be coached to have more adaptive forethought, performance, and self-reflection with each iteration of a learning task. Although self-regulatory processes are internally driven, they can be encouraged by mentors or an appropriately constructed learning environment (Zimmerman 2000) such as prompting learners to reflect on their learning tactics as they are learning how to teach using inquiry.

Fig. 1
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Self-regulated learning in professional development for developing inquiry-based lessons

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Within each of the three phases there are processes that further explain how the self-regulated learning cycle works (Zimmerman 2008). A list of processes can be found in Fig. 2. The processes among the three phases can be viewed as metacognitive and behavioral constructs, which work reciprocally (Cho and MacArthur 2011; Greene and Azevedo 2007). The metacognitive constructs consist of the ways learners set and plan goals (Locke and Latham 1990), monitor progress on goals (Zimmerman and Kitsantas 2007), and evaluate their learning processes (Zimmerman and Kitsantas 1997). Learners establish internal motivational factors related to their learning environment (self-efficacy, task interest, goal orientation; Bandura 2002; Deci 1975; Ames 1992), focus their attention (Corno 1993; Schunk 1982), and react to feedback on their performance (Zimmerman and Kitsantas 2007). Breaking down the three phases of SRL into subprocesses provides a finer grain of analysis, and could lead to new information about why elementary teachers have difficulty learning about inquiry and implementing inquiry-based instruction in science.

Fig. 2
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Subprocesses of self-regulated learning

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Measuring processes of SRL

Self-regulated learning is difficult to measure since it is an internal process and cannot be directly assessed (Boekaerts and Corno 2005). The measurement of SRL has evolved over the past few decades (Panadero et al. 2015). Initially, SRL measures were conceptualized as trait-based and relied on students’ perspectives and beliefs (e.g., MSLQ; Pintrich and Smith 1993; LASSI; Weinstein et al. 1987; SRLIS; Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons 1986). In the early 2000’s SRL measures changed from being trait-based to being defined as a process-based phenomenon (Pintrich 2000; Zimmerman 2000). The shift towards a process-based SRL called for measurements that captured processes such as think alouds, traces, and behavior observations (Boekaerts and Corno 2005; Veenman 2011; Winne and Perry 2000). It is important to note that these measures were designed to minimize the potential instructional impact so that researchers do not prompt improvement in SRL actions while administering the measure (Greene et al. 2011). More recent innovations in SRL measures have features that deliberately measure SRL during the learning task and prompt SRL improvements, such as learning diaries (Schmitz and Perels 2011) and SRL microanalysis protocols (Cleary 2011). Since the purpose of professional development settings are to concentrate learning efforts of teachers, this study adopted SRL microanalysis as a way to measure and to coach teacher SRL processes.

SRL microanalysis

SRL microanalysis is different from self-report questionnaires because SRL microanalysis is a structured interview protocol that is used to examine the cyclical phase processes of Zimmerman’s model of SRL at the time of engagement in particular tasks or situations (Cleary and Platten 2013). Traditional self-report questionnaires assume that SRL processes are stable in time and context, ask general questions not necessary related to the tasks of the learning situation, and can capture inaccurate reflections on performance due to the length of time between the learning task and administering the questionnaire (Chen and Whitesel 2012; Perry and Rahim 2011; Winne and Perry 2000). Although microanalysis techniques are qualitative and therefore require labor intensive analysis by researchers with specialized skills, they capture detailed information about learners’ metacognition and behaviors that have shown to be a reliable source of information that demonstrate variance of SRL among different levels of expertise in learners (Cleary and Zimmerman 2004; DiBenedetto and Zimmerman 2010; Kitsantas and Zimmerman 2002), including learners in science (DiBenedetto and Zimmerman 2013). Like trace logs, SRL microanalysis gathers fine grained details about processes of SRL in real-time (Winne and Jamieson-Noel 2002). However, unlike trace logs or think alouds, SRL microanalysis directs the participants thinking and captures cognitive, metacognitive, and behavioral information. Although researchers have used microanalytic protocols to assess select SRL subprocesses within a given phase of the cyclical loop (Kitsantas and Zimmerman 2002), few studies have examined all subprocesses across two cycles of learning or examined how the measurement of SRL processes can inform the instructional setting.

The qualities of SRL microanalysis fit well for the current study. The interviews completed during SRL microanalysis techniques place the processes of self-regulated learning into a contextualized setting, which is important to potentially yield why elementary teachers have difficulty adopting inquiry science instruction. Measurement of the learning processes that take place before, during and after a task can provide a more detailed description of what and how teachers learn during a professional development experience and can also provide devices from which to make professional development experiences more effective. SRL microanalysis is also beneficial because can be used as both an assessment and an intervention, which could optimize learning for this difficult subject. In microanalysis, researchers analyze SRL processes of a learner before, during and after a learning event through the use of prompts, which simultaneously encourage the learner to be reactive to the directed questions and to their own answers to the prompts. SRL microanalysis has been found to be effective in capturing academic learning strategies accurately with suburban middle school students which then set the stage for successful academic support in science and mathematics (Cleary and Zimmerman 2004; Cleary et al. 2008; Cleary and Platten 2013). Lastly, since inquiry-based science teaching has not been successfully adopted widely despite many different attempts at professional development, it was important to collect qualitative data allowing for the participants to describe the phenomena in their own words. During the interview, participants have the opportunity to clarify or expand upon statements when describing self-regulated learning processes, which provide further evidence of the quality of their processes. Since data collected represent the participant’s views, researchers are able to judge the quality of self-regulated learning processes (Gergen et al. 2015).

Inquiry

As mentioned previously, the context of the learning task of the study is inquiry-based instruction, which has been a difficult teaching pedagogy to implement widely. Inquiry is referred to as “the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived from their work” (National Research Council 1996, p. 23) and is one of the most noticeable and ubiquitous reform movements in science education for the past 50 years. Inquiry-based instruction in science has been shown to improve student achievement, understandings of science as a discipline, and explanations about real world phenomena (Handelsman et al. 2007; Hogan 2000; Hogan and Maglienti 2001; Minner et al. 2010). Teachers who use inquiry methods in instruction have produced students with more robust understandings of science than students taught using traditional methods of teaching (Duschl et al. 2007). Unfortunately, the subject of science in the United States is typically taught as either the “scientific method” or as “hands-on,” disconnected activities (Bybee 2004), which are contrary to the experiences inquiry science offers. After 50 years of reform, inquiry-based lessons are still not the norm in science classrooms and additional ways of approaching the improvement of teacher knowledge about inquiry-based instruction is needed, particularly for practicing teachers of elementary students (Davis et al. 2006).

Elementary teachers tend to avoid teaching science with inquiry because they often have low content knowledge about science and low self-efficacy of teaching science (Appleton 2003; Author et al. 2013; Bleicher 2006; Hanuscin et al. 2010). One possible reason elementary teachers have difficulty understanding inquiry is the lack of exposure to the ways of knowing that a scientist possesses (Hogan 2000). In order to construct accurate ideas about how science works as a discipline, a novice, such as an elementary teacher, must have direct guidance to the particular processes and knowledge that are necessary to the field (Kirschner et al. 2006; Heller et al. 2010). One tool that has shown merit toward guiding both elementary and secondary teachers towards inquiry-based classrooms is the 5E model (Bybee et al. 2006), which was the foundation for the professional development instruction in this study. The 5E model uses the components of engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate as the steps of inquiry for students within a lesson plan. Teachers using the 5E model for teaching inquiry are encouraged to explicitly design all of the steps into their lessons so that students can experience the necessary procedures to conduct scientific inquiry. Because the 5E model is a format for science problem solving, the model shares a symbiotic relationship with SRL. Research has demonstrated a strong link between problem solving and SRL. Learners who have strategically apply cognitive, metacognitive, and behavioral strategies within the problem solving context tended to perform better than their peers who were less strategic (Efklides 2011; Lucangeli and Cabrele 2006). Table 1 displays the ways that the 5E model of inquiry instruction encourages student problem solving and the relationship of the steps in the 5E model with SRL phases. Pairing the 5E model with SRL can connect to elementary teachers’ understandings about inquiry-based teaching in science and cognitive, metacognitive and behavioral processes during learning.

Table 1 Intersections between SRL microanalysis phases and 5e model of instruction
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SRL and teacher professional development

There has been a lack of adequate teacher training regarding the use of effective inquiry-based instruction (Yoon et al. 2007), and some researchers have called for the use of self-regulatory skills and motivational factors to promote more effective teacher education (Schraw et al. 2006). Despite this call for infusion of SRL into professional development experiences in science, teachers do not often receive this form of training, and work that is done in this area is related to SRL processes of students in the K-16 setting (Cleary and Zimmerman 2006; Loucks-Horsley et al. 2003). In a few preliminary studies on the use of self-regulated learning theory to frame teacher learning in professional development and student learning in science, SRL intervention has been useful for both instruction and assessment (Author et al. 2015; Author et al. 2010; DiBenedetto and Zimmerman 2013). As an instructional tool, teachers have used their awareness of adaptive self-regulated learning tactics to assess their strategies and improve their own learning during a professional development (PD). As an assessment tool, PD instructors can use reports of learner processes to assess their learners’ strategies during a PD and support teachers in developing more productive and effective tactics (Author 2015). The link between SRL and secondary student learning in the subject of science is beginning to be established (Author et al. 2010; Author et al. 2015), however, more research is needed in the area of teacher learning for instruction in science.

This study of in-service elementary teachers learning how to teach inquiry-based earth science instruction was driven by the following research questions:

What is the quality of self-regulated learning processes used by elementary teachers when learning how to teach earth science through inquiry?

How might the measurement of the quality of processes of self-regulated learning employed by elementary teachers during a professional development inform the learning experience?

Methods

Multiple case study and cross-case analysis (Stake 2006) were used to understand the nature of self-regulated learning of individuals and across the group. This research design was chosen because it would develop a rich profile of each teacher’s self-regulated learning processes and outcomes of the professional development in addition to a systematic analysis across teachers to discover commonalities and uniqueness across the teachers. Each case study was bounded by the teacher participating in the professional development and the quintain (the collection of cases selected to represent phenomena so that the results are neither too broad nor too narrow) consisted of the interview transcriptions from a SRL microanalysis, a document analysis of the products produced during the professional development, and the transcriptions of the audio recordings of the professional development activities.

Participants

Fourteen in-service elementary science teachers (mean experience =9.6 years; 12 females; 10 white and four African Americans) participated in a 15-week professional development course to enhance their understanding of teaching earth science content using scientific inquiry methods. The teachers volunteered to take the professional development and included teachers of kindergarten through grade 5 and elementary science specialists. They taught in an urban school district and their average class size was 23.2 students with the following demographics: 35 % white, 30 % Hispanic/Latino, 21 % African American, 8 % Asian, and 6 % two races or more. Sixteen percent of their students were speakers of other languages than English, 11 % had special education services, and 36 % were considered economically disadvantaged.

The documentation of the self-regulated learning processes was collected with SRL microanalysis protocol, which featured individualized assessment protocols, strategic administration of context-specific questions during a particular learning event, and records of verbatim participant responses (Cleary 2011). Typically SRL microanalysis protocol is administered in a relatively short time frame, such as during a 10-min practice session. This study was unique because it adapted the SRL microanalysis protocol over a longer period of time, 15 weeks, due to the length of the task, learning how to write inquiry-based lessons. Additionally, the SRL microanalysis protocol was useful because administering individualized assessments can increase the likelihood that responses were free from social influences and exposed the thinking of the individual (Winne and Jamieson-Noel 2002).

The SRL microanalysis protocol, consisting of both open-ended and Likert-type scales, was built around the task of developing inquiry-based lessons on earth science topics (see Table 2 for example questions). As recommended in the literature, questions in the SRL microanalysis were designed to be simple, brief and target a specific process such as task interest or goal-setting within the context of the learning (Cleary 2011). Three instruments were designed, one for each of the phases (forethought, performance, and self-evaluation), and were approved by two international experts in the field of self-regulated learning. The SRL microanalysis interviews were administered according to the time of engagement of the participant in each phase. The forethought phase questions were asked as the teachers were aware of their learning task but before they began the task. The performance questions were asked immediately after the teachers wrote their lesson plan, and the self-reflection questions were asked after the teachers received feedback from their peers or from implementation of the lesson.

Table 2 SRL microanalysis measures with sample codes from expert teacher
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Procedures

The PD occurred for 15-weeks and met once a week for 3 h. The content in the PD revolved around three foundational ideas: (a) interrelationships in Earth/space systems, (b) Earth patterns, cycles and geologic change, and (c) Earth resources. The teachers received instruction that included participation in six sample inquiry-oriented lessons on earth science topics, two per earth science topic, which were then analyzed by the group. The teachers also watched three video examples of exemplary scientific inquiry being taught in elementary classrooms during the first three weeks. The videos and sample lessons were presented in the course as the exemplar models from which to set goals and monitor progress. During the last six weeks of the PD, teachers were asked to develop two of their own lesson plans in the area of earth science content using inquiry methods, rate their performance according to a rubric, and report the implementation of the lesson in their classrooms to peers attending the PD.

The forethought protocol was administered before the professional development began. Since there were two opportunities to plan lessons, the performance protocol was administered twice during the professional development. The self-reflection protocol was administered at the end of the 15-week experience. The temporal administration of the protocols aided in the timely collection of the cognitive and non-cognitive processes of SRL within the context of learning. Teachers were interviewed to elaborate on their answers when necessary during the day the protocol was completed, since the intention is to expose the thinking of the participant around a particular learning task. This interview took the form of a stimulated recall (Dempsey 2010), in which there is an attempt to gain more insight into participant responses by engaging with learning products and transcripts from the protocols obtained during the learning experience and inquiring deeper into the participant meaning. Two researchers independently coded the participant responses and transcripts of interviews, resulting in a Kappa value of .90 which was considered acceptable for the analysis. The high Kappa value is not surprising because the coding categories consisted of the 12 processes of self-regulated learning phases from Fig. 2. The statements from the participants acquired from the original protocols and the stimulated recall interview were organized into a matrix which facilitated analysis within each case and across cases. The overall trends were confirmed as consistent with the evidence by two educational researchers, one in the field of self-regulated learning and the other in the field of elementary science instruction.

A document analysis was conducted with the teacher lesson plans from the class which focused on a content analysis of the lesson objectives, student assessments, and student activities. The findings from the document analysis were member checked with the teachers during the PD. The few suggested changes made by the teachers were revised and added to the matrix for each case.

Coding and analysis

Verbatim transcripts were created from the audio recordings of the training. The transcripts were read holistically and then analyzed for any critical incidents in the interactions and discourse exhibited during the PD training. For this study, critical incidents were defined as occasions that changed the direction of the class conversation or connections between occasions across different times in the class that communicated significant learning. Once critical incidents were extracted from the transcripts, researcher memos were constructed as an interpretation of the incidents (Maxwell 2003). Both the extractions of the critical incidents and the researcher memos were member checked with the teachers during the professional development. An example of a critical incident was the change in teachers’ attitudes toward the usefulness of the example video of children participating in an inquiry lesson. When the teachers were first shown the video of children successfully participating in a student-centered lesson, they were overwhelmingly convinced that their own students were not capable of asking the same questions and using logic to progress their thinking. However, by the end of the professional development, the teachers reviewed the video again and commented that they too had classrooms in which students were behaving in the same way as in the video. During the professional development teachers implemented parts of their inquiry lessons and were surprised by the high quality of learning exhibited by the students. The critical incident was defined as teacher reaction to the video, their surprise of successful, high-quality student learning, their ability to recognize the characteristics of inquiry from the video, and the recognition that they and their students were capable of performing inquiry-based science. There were no changes to the researcher memos based on the feedback of the teachers.

Two coding processes were conducted, apriori and emergent. As recommended in SRL microanalysis (Cleary 2011), the researchers defined what an expert would attempt while accomplishing the learning task so that participant strategies and tactics for that context could be compared to an expert’s tactics. Thus, the apriori codes were developed from what was expected for each process of each phase of self-regulated learning from an accomplished inquiry-based science teacher. A nationally-recognized, award-winning science teacher was asked to participate in a think-aloud about her SRL processes while she planned an inquiry lesson about Sun-Earth-Moon interactions. The SRL microanalysis questions were administered using the same approach as planned for the participants. A priori codes for each process were constructed from this interview. For example, for the goal setting process, the teacher indicated that she set goals regarding the creation of: (a) overall student-centered lesson, (b) intentionally planned points of instruction and assessment of key content knowledge, (c) student-to-student interaction, and (d) student work products that could be used for formative assessment. Participant responses were compared to the expert teacher and a matrix of similarities and differences was created for each participant teacher. The Likert-type questions were analyzed according to assumptions of the literature base. For example, if self-efficacy was rated as high, traits that are known from research about learners with high self-efficacy were examined and recorded if present. A table of the apriori-codes in the SRL microanalysis instrument can be found in Table 2. Emergent codes were derived from the open-ended written statements of the teachers that fell outside of the apriori codes. For example, the emergent code “using state learning standards as the learning goal” was established when instead of orienting goals toward inquiry-based lesson plans, teachers relied on the verbatim content-based state standards to set goals. Codes were then examined for trends within and across participants.

Positionality

Because this study was qualitative in its methodology, it is important to acknowledge the subjectivity that arises from the researchers as primary data collection instruments (Creswell 2014). Being mindful of the perspectives that researchers take due to their prior experiences can help guard against threats to validity in a study (Lincoln and Guba 2000; Maxwell 2003). As a former secondary science teacher, the lead researcher was familiar with the motivations teachers have for volunteering for professional development courses, such as wanting to further challenge students. In order to guard against this bias, structured questions were built into the protocols so that participants could explain their own motivations. Coming from a science background, the lead researcher was unfamiliar with the fears that elementary teachers had for the subject of science and was mindful to have them express their concerns from various perspectives. In order to be sure that the lead researcher could capture as many learning processes as possible, she was present at all face-to-face classes during the weeks of the PD and conversed frequently with all participants and she developed a rapport that encouraged teachers to talk comfortably without feeling that their learning was being constantly evaluated. The second researcher had no interaction with the teachers or the PD setting and was asked to join the analysis portion of the project. Having a researcher participate in analysis who did not witness the PD was helpful in reporting findings completely and to guard against making assumptions that were not recorded in the textual data.

Findings

In this first portion of the findings section, case studies are presented. The description and analysis of the case studies delve deeply into the variety of experiences that the teachers had regarding learning about earth science and about teaching inquiry. The purpose of communicating this level of detail was to demonstrate the usefulness of SRL microanalysis in revealing learning processes to the learner and to the instructor. An aggregate analysis is presented in the second portion of the findings section, which interprets broadly across all teachers’ learning experiences in the PD. The purpose of aggregating the data was to demonstrate how SRL microanalysis can be useful for adapting PD in real-time to meet the needs of the learners.

Case studies of individual teachers

An examination of individual teacher self-regulation cycles gave insight into noteworthy cases of the use of self-regulation to learn to teach using inquiry. To answer the question, “What is the quality of processes in a self-regulated learning cycle employed by elementary teachers when learning how to teach earth science through inquiry?,” case studies of three teachers was conducted. Teachers were chosen randomly from groups formed based on level of experience with inquiry-based instruction (never planned inquiry, planned inquiry but not in earth science, and planned inquiry in earth science).

The three teachers who were selected for case studies, Samantha, Lisa, and Kendra (all pseudonyms), represented a range of three to eight years of teaching experience. The case studies that follow provide detail on each teacher’s SRL processes and demonstrate how individuals in the PD initially struggled because they could not set process goals, regardless of their prior experience with inquiry-based lessons. The cases then analyze each teacher’s attempts at creating two lesson plans featuring inquiry in earth science, their attempts to monitor performance, and their subsequent shift from setting outcome goals to process goals. Finally, the cases explain each teacher’s self-reflection processes. The case studies demonstrate how SRL microanalysis can be used to cue learner strategies and provide real-time information to the PD instructor about learner needs.

Samantha

Samantha, a 35-year old African American, had five years of experience in teaching and reported that she had never authored an inquiry lesson. Samantha taught 5th grade classes for her first four years and moved to teaching 1st grade classes during her fifth year. She remarked that she moved to teaching a different grade level because the state content test was given to students at the end of 5th grade, and she was relieved to not be responsible for preparing students for the test. She was looking forward to learning more about inquiry because she felt that she had more time to teach it at the 1st grade level.

Samantha stated that she was “honestly not sure if I have done a lesson that is inquiry-based,” and not surprisingly rated her interest in planning inquiry lessons as five out of 10, her self-efficacy as a five out of 10, but rated the importance of learning how to plan for inquiry an eight out of 10. The reason she felt the topic was important was because she wanted to “have my students explore the material instead of me preaching the information.” Her perceived instrumentality of planning inquiry lessons was aligned with one element of the expert’s report from the coding, because she stated that she wanted her classroom to be more student-centered. Samantha’s goals indicated that she wanted to “acquire knowledge of what inquiry lessons are and how to teach the lessons.” Because her goals were distal and general, she had vague notions of how to attain those goals, and her ways to attain the goal she set was through the equally vague acquisition of “materials and resources.” As Samantha approached the planning inquiry-based lessons, she found the task important for her students to have a scientifically-grounded experience, but had less personal interest in learning how to teach with inquiry. Her low personal interest and low efficacy may also have been caused by her lack of understanding of how to set goals or the definition of inquiry-based lessons, because her goals were set to an outcome and lacked the strategic steps that could help her achieve those goals. Her statements revealed that she didn’t have prerequisite knowledge to get a foothold on the learning task. Samantha’s metacognitive processes were hampered by the lack of the cognitive understanding of inquiry, because she needed to know what inquiry was before she was able to monitor her success at designing inquiry lessons. The forethought interviews demonstrated to the PD instructor that Samantha needed some examples of effective lesson plans in order to acquire an idea of what to achieve in the PD, which would also support Samantha’s need for process-oriented goals to help her work toward the outcome of planning an inquiry lesson.

Samantha’s first attempt at planning a lesson on earth science using inquiry for second graders addressed the effects that changes in weather have on plants. This lesson revolved around a journal of observations, where the students created visual and verbal representations of outdoor plants over the course of the school year. Content knowledge learned through picture books about the seasons and discussions of ideas presented in the picture books complimented the skills that students demonstrated in their journals. Samantha supported student inquiry of plant changes through age-appropriate guidance of how to take rich observations of plants. She accomplished this by having students work in pairs to make audible observations to each other before recording observations in their journals and by asking students to participate in think/pair/share facilitated analysis of all of their observations over time. In this activity, she asked her second graders to look over their observations (five times over the year) and explain the content of their notes. Her performance with this first attempt aligned with her perceived instrumentality of the learning task, because Samantha created a student-centered lesson where she guided students to explain observations and share their understandings of nature. When asked about her self-monitoring and self-instruction processes for creating this lesson, Samantha cited the standards of learning as her check for progress along with “former experience with students’ exploration of science.” She felt that she was planning inquiry lessons correctly when students could answer the questions she established for them, which tended to be low-level cognition. The PD instructor felt that Samantha was making progress because she wanted her classes to be more student-centered and accomplished that in a structured way. However, Samantha did not have an entirely inquiry-oriented lesson because students were collecting data and checking for understanding of the observations, but not engaging in higher cognitive activities, such as making conclusions or synthesizing the material. She explained that discussing lesson objectives with her peers and checking with the standards of learning were the best ways for her to learn about inquiry, and that watching videos of effective teaching through inquiry was not helpful to her. Here she demonstrated her awareness that process-goals were more helpful to her than her previous outcome-oriented goals regarding learning about inquiry and how lessons are made, and demonstrated her ability to seek help from her peers and reviewing reliable sources. The awareness of the need for process-oriented goals to maximize tactics toward learning helped Samantha become more engaged with a rubric designed by the teachers and PD instructor detailing the key characteristics of inquiry lessons, and used the rubric as a monitoring tool as she began planning her second lesson.

Samantha’s second attempt at planning an inquiry lesson resulted in a two-week lesson on the water cycle. In this set of lessons, the students constructed sealed plastic bags containing cups of water. One bag was placed in a sunny location and the other in a shaded location. The bags were used to demonstrate the concepts of evaporation and condensation. Again the students maintained a journal over the two weeks and then met with peers to explain what they noticed and why they thought it was happening. Samantha gave explicit guidance to the students about things to observe such as water level in the cup and any materials on the inside of the bag. The students then watched a video on the water cycle and were expected, through class discussion, to connect what happened in the bags to the phenomena in the water cycle video. Samantha included much more background content material in this lesson than the lesson she previously designed. When asked about self-monitoring processes, Samantha said that she was “mindful of giving [the students] the procedure without telling the students what they should be seeing and what it means. I want them to make connections from an outside source.” She felt that taking the perspective of the student helped her design lessons that focused on student responsibility for learning, again aligning with her goal to create a student-centered classroom but now adding intentionally planned points of instruction and key content knowledge. She stated that she knew she was successful in creating an inquiry lesson because her students were able to effectively gather and interpret data. She extended her ability to write a lesson that included data collection, analysis and synthesis that was initiated by student-to-student interactions. In this second attempt, Samantha described that following the rubric for inquiry given in the class was key in knowing what steps to take to be successful. Samantha also changed her mind about the usefulness of the videos, which she used as a model for ways to encourage student-to-student interactions, citing in the interviews that she remembered some of the ways the teacher in the video helped the students talk like scientists. The PD instructor noted that although the rubric was available during the planning of the first lesson, Samantha did not feel it was useful until the planning of the second lesson. The PD instructor also noted that the interviews during the performance phase helped her to see Samantha’s progress toward more process-oriented goals, which gave the PD instructor leverage to support Samantha’s progress toward planning lessons with analysis and synthesis tasks for her students.

At the end of the professional development, Samantha was very satisfied with her performance of planning an inquiry lesson, rating her satisfaction a 10 out 10. She evaluated herself using the rubric and recognized the difference between her current lessons and her past teaching practices that did not incorporate inquiry effectively. She felt she was successful in learning how to plan and implement inquiry in her classroom because she was an engaged student during the professional development and the rubric helped her to “touch on all requirements for inquiry – collecting and analyzing data, drawing conclusions based on the data.” Samantha was attentive to her answers during the SRL microanalysis especially those about self-monitoring. At the beginning of the PD, Samantha was reluctant to use the rubric for lessons as a tool, but when she realized that she needed more proximal process-oriented goals to attain her outcome goal, she saw the rubric as a tangible guide for her to use as a standard from which to monitor her progress. The SRL microanalysis helped Samantha become more aware of some of her metacognitive processes, and helped the PD instructor locate leverage points to help Samantha become more proficient. For example, Samantha did not find the performances of other teachers on the video helpful until she understood the characteristics of inquiry, which illustrates how she shifted her goal orientation. She situated the rubric as process goals, smaller step-wise goals that scaffold the task of planning inquiry, and the video performances as outcome goals, which are goals that signify the completion of a task. When the PD instructor saw this shift, identified in the performance interviews, the instructor was able to re-introduce the rubric and videos to Samantha who then positively engaged with the rubric as well as the videos. When Samantha understood the steps of a process of creating an inquiry lesson, she then saw the usefulness of the interactions in the videos, which could be replicated in her own classroom.

Lisa

Lisa, a 29-year old white female, had three years of experience in teaching, and reported that she taught using inquiry prior to the class but not in the content area of earth science. Lisa joined the professional development to focus on teaching using inquiry in the content area of earth science because she had experience planning inquiry lessons in other science disciplines. Although Lisa had some experience with inquiry, she was concerned about her ability to do so in her 1st grade class. She found planning inquiry difficult for young students because the concepts in earth science are too big (plate tectonics) or too slow (geologic time) for young students to understand.

At the beginning of the professional development, she rated her self-efficacy for planning an earth science inquiry lesson as a five out of 10, mainly indicating that her low score was based on her lack of comfort with teaching earth science, not inquiry. Her task interest and perceived instrumentality were high (8 out of 10), and her reasons for taking the PD included wanting her students to think more scientifically. She set a goal to “become more comfortable planning inquiry lessons,” which was a general goal that is difficult to measure objectively. Additionally, the PD instructor noted after reading the SRL microanalysis transcript that even if Lisa reached this goal and became more comfortable planning inquiry lessons, she still may not be competent in planning inquiry lessons. The PD instructor reminded Lisa that in order to strategically plan a method to reach her goal, she needed to know the process of inquiry learning and visualize the outcome. Lisa indicated that she shifted goals to be more aligned with the PD instructor.

Lisa’s first attempt at developing an inquiry lesson plan for earth science focused on measurement of weather features using a weather vane and she structured it using the 5E process. In this lesson her second grade students were expected to explore how weather vanes work, construct a weather vane given particular materials, observe the way a weather vane measures wind direction with a fan, and elaborate on how wind direction might be helpful to humans. The 45-min lesson anticipated that the students should be able to state that a weather vane points into the wind to determine wind direction. Lisa indicated that she self-monitored during the first attempt at lesson planning by checking that the lesson met the learning objectives given by the state standards. However, those standards are content standards and not helpful in supporting inquiry learning in the classroom. The SRL microanalysis revealed that although Lisa felt she could plan inquiry, she was using process-oriented goals that were content based, potentially explain the plateauing of the improvement of her inquiry lesson plan skills. She may have been too focused on the content to change her performance to include characteristics of inquiry in her lesson. Lisa self-instructed by watching videos of inquiry lessons being conducted in elementary classrooms, and unlike Samantha, felt the videos were helpful from the beginning of the PD. Because Lisa had some experience in writing lessons using inquiry prior to this professional development experience and the PD instructor provided guidance in shifting her goals from outcome to process, she was able to use the videos of the model teachers’ interaction with students in her self-instruction. When Lisa understood how to set advantageous goals for learning, she was able to use various sources to check her progress. She also reported that the structure of the 5E model helped her to keep the student activities inquiry-based, which is a typical use of the 5E model to self-monitor for inclusion of all characteristics of inquiry lessons. She used positive help-seeking behaviors because she sought help from her peers because even though they were learning the material at the same time as she did, that they had a variety of experience different from hers and they could offer helpful advice. Lisa also explained that a person who can successfully plan inquiry knows what inquiry means and can plan using the 5E model, indicating that she was proficient in using these resources to self-observe. Lisa had a more sophisticated understanding of how to learn inquiry, because unlike most of her peers, she recognized that you first need to know what inquiry means (outcome) and understand the components of how to structure the lesson (process). She emphasized that a new piece of information that she learned was that inquiry does not have to be structured in one particular format, and she found that insight helpful in encouraging her to write more inquiry lessons. The PD instructor felt that the SRL microanalysis questions at this point in the PD was helpful in identifying the reasons for her level of proficiency (what she paid attention to when planning, how she monitored her performance) and in establishing new objectives for Lisa for the next part of the PD.

Lisa’s second attempt at creating an inquiry lesson in earth science resulted in a study of the planets of the solar system. In this lesson, students working in pairs were assigned to create a chart with the characteristics of the planets including categories chosen by the teacher and categories chosen by the students. Students were expected to independently sort the planets using the criteria of terrestrial versus gas planets, distance from the sun, and two categories chosen by the students. From this information, students were then instructed to independently create their own planet whose characteristics would reasonably fit into the solar system. Students then had to justify why the planet is placed in the arrangement of the solar system, citing details from the trends in the characteristics, such as the terrestrial planets were closer to the sun. Lisa commented that she self-monitored by thinking through each part of the 5E model and asked clarifying questions of the PD instructor if she was confused. This showed a deeper understanding of the 5E model as a tool because Lisa used the model previously and did not have any questions. Lisa used the feedback from lesson one from the PD instructor (including the shift in goals) and peer review as a guide for organizing the components of lesson two, which illustrated an expert stance in adapting her performance. She commented that she felt that writing a lesson plan using inquiry was successful when all parts of the 5E model are addressed and the lesson flows well. Similar to the way Samantha used the step-wise nature of the rubric created in class, Lisa used the 5E model to break down the tasks in a lesson into the components of inquiry and the ways components worked together to make sense in the whole lesson, which shifted her nebulous goal of feeling comfortable to a more process-oriented and then outcome-oriented goal. Lisa mentioned it was not helpful to only read about inquiry, but to also see the models of inquiry in different ways such as being a student and watching videos was helpful in developing her understanding of inquiry. After reading the SRL microanalysis transcripts, the PD instructor encouraged Lisa to enrich her experience by analyzing how the 5E model was represented in the exemplar lessons and in the videos.

Lisa reported that she was very satisfied with her performance, which demonstrated a positive self-reaction to her processes used in the professional development. She noted that she evaluated herself by checking for all of the components of the 5E model in her lesson plan, which was not as comprehensive as the rubric created in the professional development. However, her lesson plan was more aligned with inquiry characteristics than the state content standards to which she had previously compared herself. Lisa did not initially recognize that monitoring her performance by the content standards would not help her reach her goals, but after the performance interviews, she explained that using the 5E model helped her with lesson planning more than the content standards. Although her motivation for the PD was focused on accumulating more knowledge about earth science, she was still satisfied with her insights into the general skills of teaching using inquiry via the 5E model. Lisa reported that she felt that she was successful because she paid attention to the models given in class and the feedback of lesson one to promote her understanding in the design of lesson two, which demonstrated her ability to metacognitively monitor and positively adapt her performance based on feedback. Lisa did not use the rubric as others did in the professional development class, and she found ways to check her planning that addressed some aspects of inquiry teaching by using the 5E model. The PD instructor noticed that Lisa was not using the rubric in the PD, and initially encouraged her to use it. However, after reading Lisa’s performance interview transcripts, the instructor felt that Lisa’s use of the 5E model would continue to help her reach her goal and emphasized the 5E model instead of the rubric. Lisa’s reliance on the 5E model to support the planning of inquiry-based lessons was confirmed by the feedback she received and she was able to more deeply understand the nuances in planning all of the sections of the model.

Kendra

Kendra, a 62-year old white female and a career-switcher, had eight years of teaching experience, five of those years as a science lab instructor at the elementary level (which required a great deal of background knowledge in science), and she had reported planning many inquiry-based lessons in the past. Kendra worked at one elementary school, but she did not have her own class. Rather, she visited other classes at the teacher’s request to teach science for between one and five class periods at a time. She did not have a sustained relationship with the students, but she did feel that she had an opportunity to “teach many students around the school how real science is done.”

At the beginning of the professional development, she reported high self-efficacy (8 out of 10), high task interest (10 out of 10), and high perceived instrumentality (10 out of 10), as expected. She felt her past experiences with creating inquiry lessons were successful, but wanted to plan them in a more time-efficient way. She set a very specific, proximal goal for the professional development experience, which was wanting to design a time-efficient inquiry lesson. Her goal was tangible, and given her prior successes, the PD instructor felt that Kendra was at a level where setting an outcome goal would be appropriate. Kendra’s reasons for using inquiry were aligned with an expert stance because she felt it was a mechanism from which to make “my students fully engaged scientists and love science as I do.” Her attempts at strategically planning how to learn to “better plan lessons to fit in my [time] blocks” were to gain more resources through the professional development. When the PD instructor reflected on Kendra’s interview, she felt it was an appropriate strategic plan to make inquiry lessons more time-efficient. The SRL microanalysis indicated that Kendra’s experience and processes for learning positioned her to have adaptive self-regulatory skills to gain more knowledge in the PD.

Kendra’s first lesson plan involved her first graders in making planters out of recyclable materials and growing plants in these containers. The lesson began with a demonstration by Kendra explaining and showing the student what happens to different materials (aluminum, paper, and glass) when they are placed in water. The lesson then moved on to identifying parts of a plant and preparing students to make their containers so they could grow plants. Students were to grow their plants in their containers at home, while the class had two plants from which to observe and record journal entries. One plant would be kept in a closet, and the other would be kept in a sunny place. The students, with the help of Kendra, would record the amount of water each would be given each day (a constant amount), how much sunlight they were receiving, and then students would write their observations of the plants in their journal driven by the question “Does the plant need water, sunlight, and space to grow in order to get bigger?” Her performance outcome for the first lesson demonstrated she understood and was able to implement student-centered activities where students engaged in higher-order cognition associated with scientific thinking. However, there was no indication by Kendra about how she made the lessons more parsimonious, which demonstrated Kendra’s misalignment of her processes toward her outcome.

She reported that she self-instructed by checking with her prior knowledge (a productive strategy since she had extensive experience teaching science), and collaborating with other teachers, also an advantageous tactic in determining level of progress. She felt that she knew she was correct in planning an effective inquiry lesson when students were engaged and were using problem-solving strategies during the lesson, which again was aligned with an expert’s notions but not aligned with her outcome goal. Although she was experienced in teaching inquiry, Kendra checked her work against the state learning standards rather than the rubric or the 5E model, which was a vague way to monitor her progress similar to the other teachers. Her technique for self-monitoring was not aligned to achieve her goal. Once this was revealed, the PD instructor had a discussion with her that resulted in two checkpoints for self-monitoring: (a) building a lesson in which questioning was included and (b) ensuring that data collection was included in the lesson. Kendra had success with those components of inquiry from her prior work, and did not feel that it was productive to use an entirely new rubric. Since questioning and data collection were not a focus of the professional development, the PD instructor worked with her independently from the rubric. The PD instructor noted that she would not have known about Kendra’s reasonable rationale for not using the rubric, and the PD would have been less valuable for Kendra if she did not initiate the independent discussion.

Kendra’s next attempt at inquiry embedded more content learning than the first lesson. In this lesson, Kendra focused on the question “How can we use fossils to determine the age of fossils in layers of rock and the climate when the fossils were being formed?” In this two-day lesson, Kendra brainstormed with her students using two prompts “If horses were extinct today, how would we know that horses once live on our planet?” and “What is a fossil?” Through these questions, Kendra guided her students to understand that features such as skin or social behavior would not be available as information. Kendra then presented her students with a practice set of fossil cards to sort from youngest to oldest, given clues on the cards. On day two, Kendra passed out a stratigraphic section for the fossil cards and explained to students that each layer represented a different kind of rock. From the information on the cards, students were asked to sort from youngest to oldest and justify their organization to Kendra and their classmates during a peer review. Kendra mentioned during the professional development that the students surprised her with their sophistication of their rationale for their ordering of the cards in a particular way. She reported that she originally expected to only give high grades to the students who had the order correct, but then changed her assessment to include high grades for an “incorrect order” that had a rational justification. Kendra mentioned that the use of the SRL microanalysis made her think more about her own learning processes, and gave her reasons to check her students’ divergent learning processes for the fossil activity. Thus, the SRL microanalysis not only revealed Kendra’s thinking to the PD instructor, but it also helped Kendra become self-aware of her own processes, which transferred to her ability to watch for the same learning processes in students.

Kendra’s self-reflection was not robust. She rated herself an 8 out of 10 on the self-satisfaction scale for her performance, and mentioned that she did not self-evaluate her performance. Perhaps because she had prior experience in writing inquiry lessons, she felt as though she did not need to reflect on this professional development experience or it might have been difficult for her to reflect on her original goal of creating more time-efficient lessons because she seemed to become more focused on how her students’ thinking had diverged from her own expectations designed in the lesson. She rated her success in her performance eight out of 10, citing that she felt successful in planning the lesson because students had to defend their answers, something that was new to her lessons. The PD instructor felt that Kendra was too hard on herself in her reflection, and that Kendra had learned a deeper level of creating student-centered lessons that allowed for divergent thinking. The PD instructor was surprised by Kendra’s reflection and discussed it with her to help her understand the learning that occurred.

Aggregated SRL processes across all teachers in the PD

A summary of expert processes for all phases of self-regulated learning can be found in Table 3. The analysis for the aggregated results was conducted as a cross case analysis (Stake 2006). Qualitative data related to each SRL process was located across in the transcripts of the class discussions, the SRL microanalysis, and the artifacts from the class. Data were placed in a matrix according to process. Analysis was conducted by coding all emergent trends and reporting the most prominent and utilitarian for explaining the trend across all teachers. The purpose of aggregating SRL processes across all teachers was to provide an illustration of how SRL microanalysis may help professional development trainers inform their instruction.

Table 3 SRL microanalysis measures comparing aggregate findings with expert teacher responses
Full size table

The following section details the findings of the aggregate across all 14 teachers in the PD. Overall, the teachers had low self-efficacy for teaching inquiry, but high task value for learning how to teach using inquiry. The high task value may have been a factor in their persistence which led to successful learning and implementation of inquiry in their classrooms, in addition to their self-satisfaction with performance in the PD. Another factor related to their success was the instructor’s ability to recognize that teachers initially set outcome goals by administering the SRL microanalysis. The instruction subsequently constructed a rubric illustrating process goals for learning how to teach using inquiry.

Forethought processes across the group

Teachers’ mean self-efficacy of learning how to teach earth science inquiry was low (4.64 out of 10) at the beginning of the professional development, which was not surprising because elementary school teachers have low content knowledge about science. The teachers may have started the professional development with lower self-efficacy because based on their prior experience teaching they knew that inquiry-based instruction was challenging, which is not the typical case for novices who come in with high self-efficacy due to lack of knowledge about upcoming challenges (Bandura 2002). All of the teachers were especially concerned with the inability of their students to collect data on earth science topics because the subject of earth science featured extremely large phenomena (e.g. planets) and the represented processes were too slow (e.g. geologic time) for young students to understand, which also may have contributed to their low self-efficacy. The teachers reported having high task interest (7.43 out of 10) and high perceived instrumentality (8.0 out of 10) in the professional development because they felt students learn more effectively through inquiry and wanted their classrooms to become more student-centered. Although they had low self-efficacy, their high interest in the task and value on learning how to teach inquiry-based lessons could have contributed to their persistence throughout the professional development. Teachers’ goals included getting students to draw conclusions well (n = 2), have students explain their thinking and reasoning (n = 2), and to create more cohesive inquiry lessons (n = 9). Unanimously, the teachers stated that their strategic planning to meet the goals was to acquire more resources and examples. Their need for examples could indicate the teachers needed more information about what a model inquiry lesson would look like (outcome-oriented goals) so that they could establish more process-oriented goals to make progress toward their outcome goal. The teachers had difficulty setting goals because of their lack of experience with inquiry, especially in the field of earth science. Because they could not initially visualize goals, it was not possible for the teachers to articulate productive strategic planning. However, they valued the task of learning how to teach through inquiry and were confident once the professional development was underway, their colleagues would be valuable resources and reviewers.

Aggregated performance processes

The objectives of the professional development, such as providing exemplar lessons and videos as models, were aligned with the needs as communicated by all of the teachers during the SRL microanalysis. As mentioned previously, the temporal administration of the SRL microanalysis protocol allowed these adjustments before the PD activities were enacted, which was an effective and timely way to support teacher learning. In order to address the teachers’ need to set process goals, many examples of exemplar inquiry lesson plans which addressed the content standards of earth science in grades K-5 were presented (Ansberry and Morgan 2007, 2011). The exemplar lesson plans were read by the teachers before the professional development meeting, and then the teachers performed the inquiry in the role of students so that they could experience the type of thinking that was involved in the lesson. Interestingly, there was a contradiction in teachers’ goals and their subsequent performance behavior. For example, the initial goals of all of the teachers focused on what students should be able to do from the designed lessons. However, as the PD progressed, all of the teachers set process goals based on elements of the example lessons before they used the videos of the student interactions to set outcome goals. This was most likely due to the teachers’ need to know their role in inquiry before they considered how to shape student learning.

At the beginning and near the end of the PD, the teachers watched exemplar video cases of inquiry teaching at the elementary level in the content of earth science on the Annenberg Media website (Annenberg Learning 2013). The video case studies highlighted the teacher-student and student-student interactions that were necessary for productive learning through inquiry, emphasized in the videos by expert teacher commentary. The video case studies were presented to the teachers near the beginning of the professional development, and during this time the teachers vehemently articulated that the type of teaching and learning shown in the videos were unrealistic in their classrooms. Teachers did not articulate this during the class, but emphatically discussed it in their performance interviews. Again, the use of the SRL microanalysis revealed important information to the PD instructor that might not have been communicated otherwise.

During the first iteration of developing lesson plans, teachers reported that they self-monitored their attempts to plan inquiry lessons by comparing lessons with the state standards (n = 10) and aligning with each stage of the 5E model (n = 4). Although the teachers mentioned the 5E model of teaching, they did not articulate the steps involved in planning inquiry lessons beyond looking at state content standards and “making sure it is inquiry” (Teacher 5 interview), which indicated that although teachers thought they were using the 5E model correctly, they were not. Teachers relied on prior experiences with inquiry to self-instruct while they were planning (n = 5), which was most likely difficult to do given that most teachers had little experience with inquiry-based instruction. Four teachers judged whether they were correctly planning inquiry lessons by establishing if the students were able to answer questions and make meaning about nature, which were two of the criteria for inquiry-based lessons, but were the minimum standards for lesson design. The least effective method of self-monitoring learning was reported to be watching video of other teachers teaching inquiry (n = 5). The videos demonstrated tactics for engaging students, and the teachers were yet not ready to analyze the process in the classroom. Although they may have stated the videos were helpful to demonstrate engagement in the PD, the teachers felt they needed to know their own role in the classroom before they could design lessons from the student perspective. This was reflected in the SRL microanalysis reports that showed strategies for learning included reading example lessons (n = 14), which were written from the teacher’s perspective. The teachers may not have been ready to experience what the students were supposed to do in inquiry at this time, but felt more comfortable with their own role. The teachers were aware that self-monitoring their learning was productive, but struggled with articulating explicit ideas of how inquiry was accomplished and therefore missed an opportunity to compare their performance to an exemplar performance.

During the second attempt at performance, teachers changed the ways they self-monitored a lesson plan by using a rubric that articulated characteristics of inquiry rather than referring to the state content standards (n = 14). The rubric was created collaboratively by the instructor and the teachers by revisiting the exemplar lessons and cataloging the key characteristics of inquiry. It was the SRL microanalysis interview responses that gave the PD instructor the idea to create the rubric because she observed that the teachers needed smaller steps from which to design lesson (process-oriented goals). Once the key characteristics of inquiry were identified, levels of success in reaching the key characteristics were developed in the professional development and recorded on the rubric. Sections of the rubric included essential questions, student performance objectives, science content, possible misconceptions, instructional approaches, student-centeredness, knowledge building, presence of relevant data from the natural world, student sense making of data, and assessment. The rubric provided two dimensions of understanding inquiry for the teachers: (a) the criteria for developing an inquiry lesson and (b) levels of accomplishment that developmentally described emerging lessons and successful lessons. Two criteria from the rubric, data from the natural world and making sense of the data, resonated with the group and became the touchstones for self-monitoring.

The teachers improved their self-regulated learning processes by changing their method of self-instruction to include feedback from their first attempt at creating a lesson (n = 9) and the videos of exemplary teachers (n = 5) which were originally reported as not valuable. All teachers changed the ways they talked about the role of professional development experiences offered through the school district as opportunities to collaborate rather than merely acquiring information. Teachers judged their success not only by student engagement in the lesson (n = 11), but by recognizing a shift from “spoon-feeding” students information to the role of the teacher as facilitator of learning (n = 7). Many of the teachers used the characteristics of manipulating data and making meaning from data as their guide to successful inquiry (n = 11), however several reverted back to checking state content standards (n = 3), perhaps because they were less confident about their own content knowledge.

Teachers learned about inquiry by “using a model so you could check components of inquiry” (Teacher 14) and by “learning from your mistakes” (Teacher 11). After the second iteration of planning, five of the teachers began listing steps used in planning an inquiry lesson, which demonstrated their ability to be more articulate about their learning and to set process-oriented goals on their own. All of the teachers reported at this point in the professional development that they needed more than example lessons to help them check how well they were designing their own lessons. This was a shift from their forethought interviews where a majority of the teachers explained that they only needed more resources to be successful. The teachers understood the methods of teaching inquiry at a more detailed level than when they had designed the first lesson and were using these details regarding inquiry from the rubric as a method for self-monitoring. Because the rubric had both the criteria for an inquiry lesson and the levels of success in reaching the criteria, teachers had the ability to accurately self-monitor which resulted in their understanding of when to seek help. After the use of the rubric as a self-monitoring tool, the teachers were motivated to observe model student-to-student interactions using the videos of exemplar inquiry lessons which were thought previously to be unattainable.

Self-reflection processes across the group

At the end of the professional development, the mean of teachers’ satisfaction with the performance of planning an inquiry lesson was 8.9 out of 10, with only one teacher reporting below an 8 (score of 5). Teacher self-evaluation processes combined two strategies: (a) following the teacher-generated rubric for creating inquiry lessons (n = 8) and (b) asking directed questions of colleagues based on the ideas in the rubric (n = 6). The teachers saw value in the rubric, and because it was designed collaboratively by the teachers, this may have increased the self-efficacy of teaching using inquiry. The teachers saw the connections between the rubric they created, the characteristics of inquiry from the exemplar lessons, and ultimately their second attempt at planning and implementing inquiry lessons.

The mean of teacher self-reported success was 9.1 out of 10, and teachers attributed success to focusing on the key characteristics of an inquiry lesson rather than extraneous details such as how fun a lesson appeared (n = 9), and by cooperatively working with a colleague to check their work (n = 5). Teachers’ self-reaction was positive as measured by their self-reported success and their demonstrated adaptivity in shifting self-monitoring from state content objectives, which do not have criteria for inquiry teaching, to a more relevant inquiry-based rubric. Five of the teachers mentioned that they never considered using a rubric to organize their lesson plan design, and found it valuable. The collaborative explication of the characteristics of inquiry teaching in the rubric was a tangible standard for the teachers who were initially grappling with an amorphous idea of inquiry. Much like a checklist, the rubric helped teachers to analyze the characteristics of an inquiry lesson and self-reflect with confidence. Because of the increased use of the rubric as a checklist for success, it was anticipated that teachers would most likely have more productive goal setting and strategic planning processes in the future.

Discussion

Elementary teachers typically have little experience with scientific thinking and as a result have difficulty translating knowledge about the values of the scientific enterprise into pedagogical knowledge (Appleton 2003; Bleicher 2006). In many instances during this study the SRL microanalysis was used to pinpoint difficulties and successes that teachers had while learning how to teach using inquiry (Cleary 2011), further illustrating that self-regulatory processes can be encouraged by mentors (Zimmerman 2000) and suggesting that the SRL microanalysis questions can cue learners to attend to helpful learning strategies. The temporally situated questions prompted the teachers to reflect on their learning processes and identified some maladaptive processes that the PD instructor could support (Cleary and Zimmerman 2004). The teachers in this professional development had low self-efficacy, set vague outcome goals, and were not initially successful in developing strong inquiry-based lesson plans, but by the end of the 15-week professional development, the teachers had captured most of the key aspects of inquiry in all of the lessons that were developed and reported that they believed their students could be successful with inquiry (Kirschner et al. 2006; Heller et al. 2010). By identifying processes of self-regulation that are prominent and those that are underutilized using the SRL microanalysis, scaffolding can be designed to improve the cycle of self-regulated learning during professional development (Cleary and Platten 2013). Although some researchers call for SRL microanalysis techniques that should be designed to lessen impact on the participants (Greene et al. 2011), the emphasis on PD experiences is to optimize learning, therefore the SRL microanalysis was an appropriate tool that prompted both instruction and assessment in this setting (Author et al. 2015; Author et al. 2010; DiBenedetto and Zimmerman 2013). The process of prompting teachers to explain their own processes through the microanalysis could have been a factor in teacher shift from outcome to process goals. Additionally, the instructor used the microanalysis to reveal underlying beliefs and processes from which to support enriched learning (Bembenutty et al. 2013). Throughout the PD, the instructor reacted to the unique and timely information acquired from the SRL microanalysis to support individual teachers and to redesign the instruction in real-time. Microanalysis of self-regulatory learning processes illuminated detail about learning processes of teachers and has potential to be used as a tool for teacher educators to improve professional development experiences.

Teachers in the PD had high task interest and perceived instrumentality of learning about inquiry (Deci 1975), even though they initially had low self-efficacy about planning inquiry lessons because they either did not have experience with teaching using inquiry or they did not yet understand how to teach the concepts of earth science using inquiry (Hanuscin et al. 2010). The goals they initially set for themselves were distal and too general to be accomplished effectively, two qualities of unproductive goals (Locke and Latham 1990). Their low self-efficacy of teaching inquiry-based earth science coupled with a lack of sufficient knowledge to create appropriate goals for themselves could have demotivated the teachers or deterred the teachers from learning during the professional development (Bandura 2002). However, their high task interest and the understanding that inquiry-based teaching was important allowed the teachers to persist in learning, even though they did not initially have the skills to identify productive processes of learning (Zimmerman 2000). In response to the lack of process-oriented, advantageous goals and low self-efficacy, the instructor developed a rubric as a scaffolding device that articulated the elements of a successful inquiry lesson plan, which was key in developing teacher strategies for self-monitoring in the PD. The high task interest and value for the endeavor most likely helped teachers persist to engage with the rubric, which then led to improved learning and willingness to engage with the video of student interaction.

A notable variable of teacher learning during the performance phase of the self-regulatory cycle was the teachers’ use of outcomes for goal setting and self-monitoring, rather than using processes. Zimmerman and Kitsantas (1997) found that learners who began with process goals and then shifted to outcome goals when those process goals are mastered were more effective learners. In a later study, Zimmerman and Kitsantas (2007) also found that learners who had only outcome goals struggled with self-reactions, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest, which was partially corroborated in this study. In the first attempt to create inquiry lesson plans in this professional development experience, the teachers self-monitored and self-instructed their learning using the standards of learning from the state, which served as an outcome goal. This orientation toward outcome goals could explain why the teachers were initially struggling with incorporating inquiry (Locke and Latham 1990). In the second attempt at creating lesson plans, the teachers reported that they used the steps of the 5E method or the rubric created during the professional development, which articulated the steps in the process of inquiry for them to create more proximal, step-wise, process-oriented goals toward the outcome. The teachers reported that they used the rubric to help chunk the information into more digestible parts to accomplish their lesson planning task.

Another piece of evidence that the teachers were struggling to identify process goals is the use of the exemplar videos during the professional development. The videos displayed outcome goals without explaining processes, which may have been a frustration for the teachers (Locke and Latham 1990; Zimmerman and Kitsantas 1997). Initially, the teachers did not find the videos of the interactions between the teachers and students helpful and even complained that the videos were depictions of unrealistic scenarios. However, toward the end of the professional development, teachers had resources that explicitly pointed them toward process goals (5E method and the rubric) and were ready to shift to outcomes goals (using the videos as models). In other words, once the rubrics expressed the process of creating an inquiry lesson plan, the teachers saw value in viewing what the end product of such a lesson would produce in terms of teacher-student and student-student interactions (Kirschner et al. 2006; Heller et al. 2010). During the last two sessions of the professional development, the teachers, contrary to their reactions at the beginning of the professional development, requested the videos and reported that they were now accomplishing the same types of interactions with their students.

In addition to the teachers’ shift to productive process goals followed by outcome goals, the teachers initially underutilized help-seeking, but in the second iteration of performance progressed to expanding their help-seeking activities (Borman et al. 2008). It was easier for the teachers to seek help when they adopted process goals because they could better explain the help they needed, rather than trying to accomplish an outcome without knowing what it takes to be successful. At the end of the professional development, teachers articulated that they needed to experience the lesson in the role of students so that they could see what steps were necessary to accomplish the lesson through inquiry (Hanuscin et al. 2010).

Often in professional development experiences, teachers are asked to experience a lesson in the role of a student and are then asked to replicate the lesson in the role of a teacher without any guidance on how to fill in the tasks between the role of a student and the role of a teacher (Davis et al. 2006). The results of this SRL microanalysis demonstrated that one way to scaffold teachers’ learning of designing lessons is to analyze key characteristics in the lessons they experience as students and then reformat them explicitly into a rubric or a checklist from which they can develop their own lessons. Teachers indicated that they needed to plan from the teacher perspective, then the student perspective, and the rubric helped teachers to evaluate their proficiency from the teacher perspective. Teachers may not initially see a checklist or rubric as helping them to develop more dimensions to their lesson plans, but illustrating learning processes by measuring self-regulated learning cycles in conjunction with the professional development may help teachers shift from outcome goals to process goals (Zimmerman and Kitsantas 1997; Zimmerman 2008). Once teachers master process goals with the aid of a checklist or rubric, then professional development facilitators could present exemplar outcome goals as appropriate to help teachers be efficient learners. The SRL microanalysis techniques used in analyzing this professional development were helpful in explicating how the teachers were learning, what resources they were paying attention to, and how they attributed their successes and failures (Cleary 2011; Cleary and Platten 2013). The PD instructor indicated at various points during the study that she valued the SRL interview results even more than the products of the lesson plans and practice implementation for evaluating teacher learning because they “acted like a microscope, so I could see things that I normally can’t” (personal communication). With guidance from the tools used to gather teachers’ processes, ideas for the design of professional development activities were tailored to accomplish difficult-to-attain teaching techniques. Initially the PD instructor thought that the frequent administration of the SRL microanalysis interviews would disrupt the thinking of the teachers, but later she indicated that it was very useful to have ongoing microanalysis of teacher SRL processes because she was able to respond to struggling teachers immediately. The identification of self-regulated learning cycles within professional development activities can be useful as a timely evaluation of the learning progress of the teachers as well as offering information to the instructor for the adjustment of resources given in the professional development based on the needs of the teachers.

Implications

The results of this SRL microanalysis of elementary teachers learning how to create inquiry lessons in the context of earth science highlighted some strategies that could be employed in designing professional development programs. Processes found to improve learning in this PD can be found in Fig. 3, which illustrates the progression of the PD chronologically from left to right. These processes can potentially be used to inform professional development experiences in many content areas, since the strategies are not strictly related to science. Before designing the PD curriculum, instructors could access prior knowledge of the teachers in order to determine the entry point of the professional development so that it is challenging, yet not too difficult for the teachers and connects to teacher prior experiences (Knowles 1980). After determining an appropriate entry point for the PD, the instructor could assist teachers in examining exemplary lessons for the topic, make a list of effective characteristics about the lessons from which the teachers could set process-oriented goals, and synthesize an end product from which teachers could set their outcome goals for learning. With support from the PD instructor, teachers could then analyze the task of learning for the PD so that they could explicitly develop, monitor, and evaluate success from process and outcome goals for the PD. A task analysis of the learning from the PD might include identifying reliable resources from which to monitor teacher learning and identifying appropriate sources for help seeking. The task analysis and the synthesis of exemplary lessons could be compiled into a rubric with levels of competence for process and outcome goals, which could be used by the teachers for self-monitoring. In a sense, the rubric could become a scaffold for metacognition. As teachers performed the task related to the goal of the PD, they could use the rubric to check their competence in reaching their process goals. Because teachers should be able to visualize how lesson plans will be enacted, the PD developer could use videos to help teachers monitor the success of their outcome goals. Videos from reliable resources and teacher-made videos of lesson plan implementation could be equally helpful.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Beneficial processes of a professional development

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The remainder of this paper describes suggestions for professional development programs based on the key findings from the study. First, the participants of a professional development could acquire relevant background knowledge by participating in exemplar lessons in the role of students. Taking the role of a student in exemplar lessons has the affordance of the teacher experiencing a model lesson rather than merely reading about it, but it also puts the teacher into a position of being a learner. Experiencing several exemplar lessons sets the stage to help teachers seek out common characteristics from different lessons. This has the potential to build confidence in teachers about planning and offers various examples from which to adapt when they need to change their teaching processes.

Once the teachers develop confidence that they have ample background knowledge from the experiences, the instructor could help teachers set process goals by explicating the key characteristics of the teaching and learning. Making a list of key characteristics of the teaching and learning goals of the professional development can help teachers creates smaller, more attainable process goals so that new techniques can be learned with smaller steps, later building to the outcome goal. Additionally, creating a rubric with all of the key characteristics can help teachers think about two dimensions of the learning: necessary components of the learning and level of competence per component. Teachers can be encouraged to use this rubric as a guide when attempting their own design of a novel teaching technique and as talking points for frequent feedback from the instructor.

Once teachers are ready to set outcome goals, instructors could offer resources that model the outcomes of teacher-student and student-student interactions featured in the PD, such as videos of exemplar lessons from PD participants, other classrooms, or professionally developed materials. Examining these exemplar models can help teachers self-monitor their own performance. In this way, teaching techniques that are difficult for teachers to implement, such as inquiry, can be presented in a developmental way that scaffolds teacher learning. Providing professional development experiences that help teachers deconstruct model lessons and then reconstruct them for their own needs has the potential to change teacher education in a meaningful way.

Research limitations and future directions

In this study we attempted to examine teacher learning processes during a PD experience using SRL microanalysis as a central measure with other data sources such as transcripts of classroom discourse and artifacts from the PD. Limitations to this study include the selective sample for the case study, since the PD was voluntary for the teachers. Although the purpose of the current case study was to closely analyze a few individual’s experiences with a small sample, this design does not give broad insight into a large number of teachers’ experiences in different professional development settings, so caution should be applied to making broad conclusions. Additionally, SRL microanalysis may only be useful to PD instructors who have the time to interview all of the participants and to those instructors who are knowledgeable about supporting SRL processes.

This was an exploratory study of the use of SRL microanalysis for improving learner strategies and assisting PD instructors to tailor instruction in real-time. Future research could focus on the use quasi-experimental or experimental designs to pinpoint influences of learner strategies on learning outcomes and on curriculum redesign by the PD instructor. Although this study examined two attempts at designing lesson plans, questions remain about the influence of learning process awareness, prompted by the SRL microanalysis, during the first attempt at designing lessons on the use of learning processes during the second attempt. SRL theory recognizes that self-reflection processes may influence forethought processes in the next cycle of learning (Zimmerman 2000), but more evidence is needed to explain ways in which prior learning processes and outcomes may influence subsequent cycles.