Academic Areas & Divisions

Curriculum & Instruction

Jessica J. Thompson

Research Assistant Professor, Curriculum and Instruction

122 Miller Hall
Box 353600
(206) 221-4630
jjthomps@u.washington.edu

Education Publications Other Sites Curriculum Vitae News

Jessica Thompson is a research assistant professor in the UW College of Education. Her scholarship focuses on building K-12 networks that support novice and experienced science teachers in learning ambitious equitable practices. She is the Principal Investigator on a Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship, which developed a mentoring community for novice and experienced science teachers, the Co-Principal Investigator on an NSF grant that develops tools and induction supports for novice teachers, the Co-PI Washington STEM grant that supportsjob-embedded professional development for science teachers in two local school districts.

In 2010 she was awarded a fellowship from the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation, which supported research and development of tools and routines for mentor teachers in learning ambitious practices. This work included the development of summer institutes for mentors and for science instructional leaders in six major school districts. She is currently working with the Institute for Systems Biology and the North Sound LASER Alliance TOSA network (a group of instructional leaders in districts in the Puget Sound Region) to develop professional learning communities in schools and across districts. Related to this work she founded a video club with Seattle Public Schools, Lenses on Learning, to support in-service teachers in developing a learning community that works toward ambitious equitable practices.

Dr. Thompson also has expertise in working with underserved students in secondary science classrooms and developing interventions that learn from, and support ethnic minority girls' engagement in scientific inquiry (dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women; 2007 Selma Greenberg Dissertation Award). She currently has an NSF grant in partnership with Rochester and the University of Michigan, to support an afterschool club for underserved girls in science.

Her background is in Biology and Chemistry and she taught high school and middle school science as well as a drop-out prevention courses for eight years in North Carolina and Washington State. At the UW she has taught secondary and elementary science teaching methods courses and Culturally Responsive Math and ScienceTeaching.

Education

Ph.D., University of Washington, 2006

Publications

*Thompson, J., Windschitl, M. & Braaten M. (In Press). Developing a theory of novice teacher practice. American Educational Research Journal.

*Thompson, J. (under revision, Journal of the Learning Sciences). Engaging girls’ socio-historical identities in science.

Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Stroupe, D. (in press). Identifying big ideas in science. Science education news.

*+Thompson, J., Kramer, A., Carlson, L. Holladay, L., & Sjoberg, B. (in press). Shifting the intellectual authority in science classrooms from teachers to students: How novice teachers use tools to analyze and advance practice. Networks: An On-Line Journal for Teacher Research.

*Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., Braaten, M. & Stroupe, D. (2012). The beginner’s repertoire: Proposing a core set of instructional practices for teachers of science. Science Education, 96 (5), 878–903.

*Furtak, E.M., Thompson, J., Braaten M. & Windschitl, M. (2012). Learning progressions to support ambitious teaching practices. In A. Alonzo & A. Wenk Gotwals (Eds.), Learning Progressions in Science: Current Challenges and Future Directions, pp. 405-434. Sense Publishers: Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

*Windschitl, M., Thompson, J. & Braaten, M. (2011). Ambitious Pedagogy by Novice Teachers: Who Benefits From Tool-Supported Collaborative Inquiry into Practice and Why? Teachers College Record, 113(7).

*+Thompson, J., Braaten, M., Windschitl, M., Sjoberg, B., Jones, M., & Martinez, K. (2009). Examining Student Work: Evidence-based learning for students and teachers. The Science Teacher, 76(8), 48-52.

*Windschitl, M., Thompson, J. & Braaten, M. (2008). How novice science teachers appropriate epistemic discourses aroundmodel-based inquiry for use in classrooms. Cognition and Instruction, 26(3), 310-78.

*Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Braaten, M. (2008). Beyond the Scientific Method: Model-Based Inquiry as a New Paradigm of Preference for School Science Investigations. Science Education, 92(3).

*Windschitl, M. & Thompson, J. (2006). Transcending simple school science investigations: Can pre-service instruction foster teachers’ understandings of model-based inquiry? American Educational Research Journal, 43(4), 783-835.

*Thompson, J. & Windschitl, M. (2005). “Failing girls”: Understanding connections among identity negotiation, personal relevance & engagement in science learning from underachieving girls. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 11(1), 1-26.

*Thompson, J. (2002). Situating gender identities in science engagement. In M. Weinburgh & S. L. Jones (Eds). Proceedings of Gender and Science Education International Conference. Situating Gender and Science Education in Local Contexts. Fort Worth, TX: Institute of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education.

In preparation:

Thompson, J., Hagenah, S., Kang, H., Stroupe, D. & Windschitl, M. Rigorous and Responsive Classroom Communities. (In preparation for Teachers College Record).

Thompson, J., Hagenah, S., Laxton, K., & Lohwasser, K. Problems with ceilings and problems without: How mentoring communities frame and solve problems around ambitious and equitable teaching and learning. (In preparation for Journal of Teacher Education).

Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., Braaten, M. & Stroupe, D. The beginner’s repertoire: The design and testing of core instructional practices for teacher preparation (In preparation for Teachers College Record).

Kang, H., Thompson, J., Windschitl, M. Creating Opportunities to Show Students’ Authentic Disciplinary Proficiency. (In preparation for Teachers College Record).

Hagenah, S. & Thompson, J. How Novice Teachers Contextualize Science Phenomena in Classroom Talk. (In preparation for Science Education).

*(peer reviewed)
+ (practitioner article co-authored with teachers)