Colorado College Noyce Scholarship Program

Colorado College, Colorado Springs CO

Investigators

Abstract

With funding from the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, the Colorado College Noyce Scholarship Program is recruiting Noyce STEM Teaching Scholars in the sciences and mathematics. The project is funding 29 scholarships over 5 years: 9 of these are graduating from the 9th semester Teacher Preparation Program (Noyce Scholars) and 20 are graduating from the 5th Year Master of Arts in Teaching Program (Noyce MAT Scholars). In this project, Colorado College is collaborating with Colorado Springs School District 11 and Harrison School District 2. The goal of the project is to develop high-quality, culturally-conscious science and mathematics teachers. To achieve that goal, the project is creating a community of undergraduate Noyce STEM Interns who develop a sense of self-efficacy for teaching diverse learners and consider teaching science or mathematics as a career. To further support the goal, the curriculum is infused with the practice of culturally relevant pedagogy to prepare the teachers-in-training for the high-need schools in which they will work. The project also includes a newly-designed teacher induction program, with an integrated mentoring program, to help teachers thrive in the environment of high-need schools. The PI team has identified four barriers to recruitment, preparation, and retention of high-quality teachers and has developed strategies to address them. The first barrier is exposure of STEM educators to culturally diverse teaching experiences. To address this barrier, the PI team is providing 20 STEM freshmen and sophomores in summer internships that focus both on culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and research methods and analysis. The strategy to address the lack of appropriate preparation for CRP is to integrate the principles of CRP into the teacher education curriculum. To overcome the barrier of staffing and retaining qualified STEM teachers in high-need schools, the project is combining the financial incentive of the scholarships with a rigorous clinical experience that links educational theory on multicultural education with pedagogical practice and long-term teacher professional development. To overcome the barrier of retaining thriving STEM teachers in high-need schools, the project is developing a two-year induction program that includes mentoring and intentional engagement to prevent teacher burnout. The project is being evaluated using demographic data, grades and graduation rates, lesson plan analysis, and, through surveys, student perceptions. The data collected will inform teacher preparation program nationwide in best practices to recruit, prepare and retain culturally relevant teachers for under-resourced schools.