Building Capacity to Produce Quality STEM Teachers in Alabama

Spring Hill College, Mobile AL

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national need of preparing quality STEM teachers for multicultural classrooms and high-needs school districts. Spring Hill College is in a region of Alabama that has a high need for qualified STEM teachers to serve the needs of local students. The project intends to help meet this need, starting with planning how to increase interest in teaching careers. To this end, the project will survey early STEM undergraduate majors about their career goals, interests, and awareness of opportunities in teaching. The resulting data are expected to assist the project in identifying effective strategies to promote teaching careers. In addition, the project intends to increase the interest of high school students in STEM teaching. The development of hands-on opportunities for high school and college STEM students to engage in teaching experiences and results of the project the evaluation are expected to guide development of the College's teacher preparation pathways. This project at Spring Hill College includes partnerships with Mobile County Public Schools, a high need district with approximately 58,000 K-12 students. Spring Hill College intends to develop and test how curricular and outreach programming, including community outreach events that engage students and families in hands-on STEM experiences, may help students explore STEM teaching opportunities. Ultimately, the aim of these efforts is to elevate the value of STEM teaching careers, thus building capacity to attract and develop a new pipeline of highly capable secondary mathematics and science teachers for the region's schools. This Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 STEM teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts. 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.