Education for Sustainability - Philly: Inspiring Student STEM Engagement and Success by Harnessing Regional Resources and Developing Teacher Leadership

Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr PA

Investigators

Abstract

The Education for Sustainability - Philly Noyce Capacity Building project at Bryn Mawr College will address the national need for highly effective teachers who can engage and inspire their students to succeed in STEM by linking the study of STEM to the real world issue of sustainability. The project will create a model for master teacher development in Education for Sustainability that prepares teachers to teach STEM content using themes from sustainability. The teachers will learn to incorporate hands-on pedagogies that put learning into action by providing opportunities for students to address authentic sustainability challenges in their own schools and communities. The master teachers will support implementation of the School District of Philadelphia's comprehensive sustainability plan, GreenFutures, that calls for including principles of sustainability throughout the curriculum. The project is situated within the region's STEM sustainability "ecosystem," a rich array of STEM and sustainability assets, including informal education organizations, institutions of higher education, green businesses, community, parent and teacher groups, that will be cultivated to support the master teacher program and the GreenFutures plan. The Education for Sustainability - Philly project, which is supported by a Noyce Capacity Building grant, will lay the groundwork for a future grant submission to the Noyce Track 3 Master Teaching Fellowship program. During the one year capacity building period, the project will test aspects of the master teacher model via a pilot program involving 12 STEM teachers from the high-need School District of Philadelphia and three STEM faculty from the project's community college partner, Community College of Philadelphia. Participants will use a learning community structure to design, implement, and assess sustainability themed STEM curricula that incorporate place-based instruction and use school facilities as living laboratories. The pilot will make use of the resources available in the STEM sustainability ecosystem. Lessons learned on how to develop a regional STEM ecosystem that successfully engages a wide range of stakeholders to support a large urban school district's innovative curricular initiative will be of value to other urban regions in the country. To help prepare for the project's future Noyce Track 3 Master Teaching Fellowship proposal submission, an additional component of the capacity building project will be to identify the required matching funds needed for the future proposal.