Preparing a Community of Outstanding STEM Teachers for Rural and Urban Northeast Texas

East Texas A&M University, Commerce TX

Investigators

Abstract

This Track 1 Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program will recruit and prepare thirty-two students over five years to become secondary physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics teachers in high-needs school districts in Northeast Texas. Counties in this region suffer from a shortage of secondary STEM educators. Compounding this problem are high turnover rates that are at least partially caused by the isolation that STEM teachers in this region often experience. This project will address these problems through three primary efforts. (i) Potential Noyce Scholars will be recruited with activities that present teaching as an attractive, first-choice career option and by providing students teaching experiences early in their academic careers. (ii) Noyce Scholars will be prepared through teaching tracks that combine their major courses with teacher certification courses and a dedicated class in each major which covers discipline-specific pedagogy, education research, and culturally-responsive teaching. (iii) Noyce Teachers will be supported as they work in local high-needs schools by individual mentor teachers and a mutually supportive community of Noyce Teachers, Noyce Scholars, learning assistants, in-service teachers, and participating faculty. The community will meet regularly and will foster collaboration and communication between rural and urban districts. Based at Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC), this project will be a collaboration between TAMUC, the local rural school districts of Commerce, Caddo Mills, and Royse City, and Region 1 Educational Service Center which serves the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and the rural counties to the east. Over the course of the project, thirty-two STEM teachers in four cohorts of eight will be prepared to meet the needs of both rural and urban high-needs schools in Northeast Texas. Towards this end the project team will follow a three-step process. First, it will raise awareness of the program and its benefits through a broad advertising campaign. Second, it will recruit twenty-four freshmen and sophomore students/year into an expanded learning assistant (LA) program in introductory physics, chemistry, biology, and math classes. Third, the team will recruit Noyce Scholars from the LA pool and community college transfer students. Noyce Scholars will have two mentors, an in-service teacher and a member of the project team. The impact of the LA and Noyce programs on the teaching practices of new teachers and the impact of the LA program and the Noyce program on discipline-specific identity, teacher identity, and career interests will all be measured. Details about the implementation of the project, materials created through the activities of the community of practice, and research results will be reported in peer-review STEM education journals, at local and national conferences, and on the project website. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.