Exploring the Capacity to Improve Teacher Education

Longwood University, Farmville VA

Investigators

Abstract

With capacity-building funding from the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, a team at Longwood University (LU), partnering with Danville Community College, John Tyler Community College, and Southside Virginia Community College (members of the Virginia Community College System, VCCS), will develop plans to prepare STEM teachers in Southside Virginia by strengthening LU's secondary STEM teacher pipeline. The two goals of this project are to (1) improve the capacity to recruit Virginia Community College System (VCCS) STEM students who will transfer to Longwood in pursuit of careers in STEM teaching; and (2) develop strategies for recruiting, preparing, and supporting STEM majors in Longwood's secondary mathematics and science teacher preparation programs. This project will address the acute shortage of secondary STEM teachers in this region, helping to catalyze regional advancement in the Southside Virginia. To strengthen collaboration with community colleges, this capacity-building project will (1) establish new relationships with faculty at the partnering community colleges, (2) improve advising and the availability of information for students considering transfer into LU's STEM education programs, and (3) implement and assess a pilot recruitment event for VCCS. This project will also identify at least two school districts surrounding each of the three VCCS partners that are interested in participating in a secondary STEM education mentoring program. Additional intellectual merit rests in plans to investigate factors impacting STEM student decisions regarding an education concentration and to promote the secondary STEM education programs to incoming students with strong mathematics and science backgrounds who are not initially STEM majors, but would become STEM majors prior to receiving Noyce scholarship support in a potential future Track 1 project that might emanate from this Capacity Building project. Furthermore, the project will investigate learning communities and other supports for pre-service STEM teachers. Extensive data collection and analysis activities will support the relationships between Longwood and partnering community colleges and by shedding light on factors related to recruitment.