Building Capacity for a Preservice STEM Teacher Pipeline in Hawaii

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national need of preparing high-quality teachers for high-need school districts in Hawaii. As demonstrated by data provided by the State of Hawaii Department of Education, Hawaii has a strong need for qualified STEM teachers. This project intends to build capacity for developing a teaching certification program that will prepare participants to serve in island-based, rural, high-need school districts. Specifically, it aims to develop a new community college preservice teacher education program for STEM professionals wishing to change careers, as well as to promote transfer of community college STEM majors into an existing university-based preservice teacher education program. The project also focuses on building capacity for future recruitment and retention that will allow successful statewide alliances to be scaled up for broader impact. This project at University of Hawaii Maui College includes partnerships with the Hawaii State Department of Education, the University of Hawaii at Manoa - College of Education, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, and community experts. The overall goal of the project is to create a community college preservice teacher education program that will increase the number of K-12 teachers by serving career-changing STEM professionals and promoting transfer of STEM undergraduates into a university-based teacher education program. These new K-12 teachers will be prepared to serve in high-need schools in which a majority of the students are Native Hawaiian, Filipino, or other underrepresented minorities. The project intends to convene collaborators at two Maui Noyce Summits to explore with major stakeholders the gaps in the Maui STEM-teacher pipeline and to seek their assistance in preparing a broad and diverse STEM K-12 teacher pool for high-need schools. The project also seeks to establish baselines of performance metrics that could be used to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of filling the STEM teaching gap areas and for scaling up recruitment and retention of Native Hawaiians, Filipinos, and other underrepresented minorities. The project draws from the Grown-Your-Own program’s theory that proposes to build a pool of teacher candidates from the school community. These teachers will be more likely to reflect the racial, ethnic, and economic characteristics of the students, and will be more likely to stay in the district for a longer period of time. This theory is supported by research demonstrating that teachers often prefer to teach in geographic locations that are similar to the places where they grew up and where they share similar backgrounds as the students. This Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professional to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 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.