STEM Teacher Leadership Network

Terc Inc, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

STEM teachers are remarkable collaborators within their schools, sharing their insights and best practices, and developing lessons and curricula that challenge their students. That's what great teachers do. Online interaction among teachers in our digital world, however, is largely episodic and sometimes, in the case of social media platforms, all too brief. Our project will develop and facilitate an interactive learning community and collegial network for STEM teacher leaders and aspiring teacher leaders. Our STEM Teacher Leadership Network (STEMTLnet) builds on past work for NSF and will allow teacher leaders to access and benefit from a trusted community that provides up to date resources related to leadership, mentoring, classroom innovations and interventions as well as content and pedagogical knowledge across broad STEM topics. Teacher leaders will benefit from a support system, engaging those from their own and other leadership programs. Leaders will benefit by having a forum to share queries, requests for advice, and by providing expertise. Aspiring and newly recognized teachers will learn from and with those having more experience. This interactive community for teacher leaders will serve multiple teacher leadership communities, including, but not limited to: (a) Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST), as well as the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM); (b) Principal investigators and participants in NSF's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program and teacher leaders developed through multiple NSF Math and Science Partnership projects; and (c) Fellows and recipients of multiple other programs, including: Albert Einstein Fellowship program, Knowles Science Teaching Fellowships, Math for America Teacher Fellowship Program, Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program, STEM Teachers of the Year, NSTA/NCTM STEM Ambassadors program, and alumni of the National Academies Teacher Advisory Council. Although our primary audience will be Presidential Awardees, our vision is inclusive, and we will invite those who are, or have been, part of any of the above programs as they have much to offer. We envision this interactive professional learning community as a place where teacher-leaders share with each other their paths to leadership; their emerging capacity to influence school, district, state and national policy for positive change; their challenges, strategies, lessons learned, resources, and the impact they have had. The multi-modal network will facilitate cross-talk between groups, while also providing the possibility for leaders of particular programs to create groups for their own constituents. Research and evaluation will inform the field of the potential benefits of an online community to promote, facilitate, and support teacher leadership of many kinds. In addition, we will study the benefits accrued to a particular subgroup that of PAEMST awardees. This award comports with NSF Strategic Goal 1: Expand knowledge in science, engineering, and learning; and NSF Strategic Goal 2: Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges. Funding for this project is provided by the Excellence Awards in Science and Engineering program and the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program. 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.