Learning to Lead (L2L): Building STEM Teacher Leaders that Broaden Participation in High-Need Schools

Citadel Military College Of South Carolina, Charleston SC

Investigators

Abstract

This Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program Track 3: Master Teacher Fellows (MTF) project aims to broaden participation by connecting rural teachers to professional development and one another. Teachers will experience and reflect on effective pedagogies via graduate coursework culminating in two South Carolina Add-On Certification Endorsements (Problem Based Learning and Online Teaching and Teacher Leader), as well as 30 additional hours of graduate credit. While teacher education programs have prepared teachers for the content and pedagogies of the traditional school, few, if any, have prepared teachers for the unanticipated immersion into the online space that occurred during the first 18 months of the COIVD-19 pandemic. The Project Based Learning certificate will help MTFs explore ways to leverage their enhanced pedagogical content knowledge, including new and exciting forms of student engagement, student-to-student interaction, and assessment. Through the Teacher Leader certificate, the MTFs will learn research-based strategies that have been shown to promote quality teacher leader outcomes, including balancing teaching and leading, attending to equity-based norms of teaching, and knowledge of adult learning and career development. Teachers will connect with one another as they collaborate with project staff to create a statewide rural math teacher network, a teacher-driven professional community focused on addressing the unique challenges and opportunities faced by rural mathematics teachers. The Citadel’s Learning to Lead (L2L): Building STEM Teacher Leaders that Broaden Participation in High-Needs Schools project is a collaboration between The Citadel’s Zucker Family School of Education and Swain Family School of Science and Mathematics (higher education), as well as Georgetown County School District (high-need local education agency) and the Lowcountry STEM Collaborative (non-profit). This project seeks to develop 18 teachers (with at least a Master’s degree) into Rural Teacher Leaders over five years. The L2L project strives to stimulate sustainable improvements in the quality of mathematics teaching and learning in rural high-needs schools through the following four goals: (1) building MTFs’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills, (2) building MTFs’ teacher leadership knowledge and skills, (3) collaborating with MTFs to create the SC Rural Math Teacher Network (SC-RMTN) with associated PD resources, and (4) supporting teachers to continue the SC-RMTN into the future. The L2L project incorporates an intentional form of gradual release in which MTFs take ownership of the knowledge, resources, and communities they have helped to create, greatly increasing the likelihood of project continuation long after its initial 5 year period. This Track 3: Master Teaching Fellowships 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 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention 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.