Developing the Abilities of Teacher Educators to Model Core Teaching Practices for STEM Teacher Candidates

Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving the quality of teaching that teacher candidates experience in STEM. The project aims to ensure new teachers in crucial STEM fields can effectively perform core teaching practices (CTPs)—a relatively small set of specific, instructional skills that research has shown to best support learning for all students. For example, one important CTP is building respectful relationships with students. Research also suggests that, if CTPs are not explicitly modelled in teacher preparation courses, teacher candidates are unlikely to go on to use those teaching methods in their own classrooms. This project proposes to “train the trainers” by developing teacher educators’ skills and understandings regarding CTPs, an approach to teacher education that is unfamiliar to most. In particular, as an essential first step in moving toward CTP-focused instruction, participating teacher educators will effectively model those techniques for novice teachers. The project’s results will be used to refine this process and make it replicable for other institutions, and to inform subsequent work to support teacher educators in teaching and assessing CTPs directly rather than only modelling those methods. This project aims to support teacher educators in transitioning to teacher preparation that focuses on core teaching practices (CTPs). Research indicates that such transitions face many challenges, with experienced teacher educators commonly regarding CTPs as little more than applying new terms to well established training methods. The facilitation of this project will be through a community of practice (CoP) in which STEM teacher educators are guided by and learn with project personnel. While the latter have considerable experience with teaching CTPs to novices, there are invaluable lessons to be learned in assisting fellow teacher educators to do similar work. CTPs particularly relevant to student learning in STEM will be prioritized. Rather than immediately training participants to teach and assess CTPs, however, this project will begin with a crucial and more quickly realized, intermediate goal—the ability to actively model those teaching methods. “Actively modelling” involves more than demonstrating a teaching method; it requires teacher educators to explicitly identify the technique for students and to explain why it is performed in certain ways. Project participants will also examine how those efforts influence their students’ thinking about teaching. Evidence of the project’s impacts will be gathered through artifacts generated by participants in collaboratively planning, practicing, recording, analyzing, and improving their active modelling of CTPs. This will be supplemented by pre/post written reflections by and interviews of teacher educators and teacher candidates. The analysis of this data and reporting of results will be particularly valuable to other teacher education programs that understand the considerable improvements to teacher preparation that can be achieved by supporting teacher educators in transitioning to a focus on CTPs. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. 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.