Capital Area Science Educator Development

Georgetown University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The project aims to serve the national need of building capacity to educate more secondary science educators through creation of a secondary science certification track at Georgetown University. The shortage of secondary science educators is significant: nationally there are ~250,000 unfilled STEM teacher positions in middle and high schools, with ~⅓ of schools reporting an unfilled teaching position in at least one science subject. In the middle of the ‘23-’24 academic year, the greater Washington, DC Metropolitan area has over 150 unfilled science teaching positions. The curriculum in this new master’s program will prepare prospective science teachers to develop and deliver culturally and linguistically responsive high school science curricula that can, in turn, create welcoming classrooms in secondary schools for traditionally disenfranchised student populations in the sciences. Additionally, by bringing local high school science teachers together with university science professors in the creation of the educator preparation curriculum, the project can open a meaningful channel of communication that is often missing between high school and college science educators. This project at Georgetown University includes partnerships with the District of Columbia Public and Public Charter Schools. Project goals of this capacity-building proposal include: (1) Establish a new secondary science teacher certification track in the Masters in Educational Transformation program at Georgetown University; (2) Conduct a needs assessment with regional school partners to ensure that the program design maps explicitly onto their science educator needs; (3) Develop a targeted recruitment plan for STEM professionals seeking to change careers as there are many STEM professionals in the greater Washington, D.C., area already committed to public service for whom this opportunity will be particularly attractive; and (4) Design a curriculum that integrates Georgetown University's educational expertise in science, the preparation of educators for English learners, and culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies. 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.