Catalyzing STEM Education: Bringing K-12 Educators, College STEM and Education Faculty together to recruit, prepare, and retain future STEM educators

Nazareth College Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

The project aims to serve the national need of building capacity in preparing high-quality science and math teachers in high-need districts. In many districts, there is a high percentage of teachers who teach outside of their subject area. While the demand for people with STEM backgrounds in the workforce is increasing, the number of college students pursuing STEM teacher preparation is very low. K-12 student success in STEM is linked to high quality instruction by teachers who have strong STEM backgrounds. In order to counter this problem, this project will run a series of workshops to connect college faculty with K-12 teachers and administrators to understand what knowledge, skills, and other characteristics future STEM teachers need to be successful. The outcome will be the creation of a group of college faculty well-prepared to teach STEM content to pre-service teachers. College administrators will then be able to attract prospective college students to the field of STEM education with a well-deigned STEM teacher preparation program. The premise of this work is that getting teachers, college faculty, and administrators at the table to discuss teachers' needs and abilities will make STEM teacher preparation more successful in the long run. This project at Nazareth College includes partnerships with the Rochester City School District and Greece Central School District. Project goals include 1) deepening partnerships with two regional high-need school districts; 2) ascertaining the knowledge, skills, and dispositions those districts need in future STEM teachers; 3) developing curriculum, learning experiences, and assignments/assessments at Nazareth, both in STEM content and Education classes that will develop the requisite skills, content knowledge, and dispositions in future Noyce Scholars; 4) providing professional learning for Nazareth faculty to support their utilization of said pedagogies; and 5) identifying the best ways to recruit and retain future educators, from and for those districts when possible. Curricular materials developed will include assignments, lessons or lab activity descriptions, course syllabi, and curricular maps and plans. Once these deliverables are used in the classroom and likely refined by the instructors, dissemination can occur as poster presentations at STEM educator conferences or submitted to Peers Data Hub, “Partnerships for Expanding Education Research in STEM” an NSF-funded “research data hub and collaborative space for diverse STEM education research communities to build and advance knowledge through sharing innovative ideas, methods, and tools.” 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 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.