Commitment to Recruit, Educate, and Assist Teachers in Equity (CREATE)

North Central College, Naperville IL

Investigators

Abstract

The Commitment to Recruit, Educate, and Assist Teachers in Equity (CREATE) project aims to serve the national need of preparing highly qualified teachers to meet the persistent problem of a shortage of STEM teachers nationally, particularly teachers from underrepresented minority groups prepared to meet the needs in high-need school districts, specifically in highly diverse secondary classrooms. North Central College (NC) will help ameliorate this problem by partnering with both a two-year Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) to leverage a transfer pipeline and a highly diverse high school to recruit prospective STEM teacher candidates. By the end of their time at NC, these future teachers will be trained in data-supported, culturally sustaining STEM pedagogy while earning bachelor's degrees in STEM and Secondary Education. The expected outcomes of this project are to recruit and prepare 20 diverse STEM teachers and support them through their induction years to meet the needs of highly diverse schools and influence more underrepresented students to pursue STEM teaching. This project is of interest to the public in that it will be demonstrative of how communities may address this problem through recruiting STEM teachers from within, through cross-institution partnerships. This project at North Central College includes partnerships with high-need School District U-46 (Elgin) and Elgin Community College, an HSI. CREATE will prepare 20 STEM teachers in biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science, and mathematics over the five-year project. Each scholar will receive three years of induction support in the field; therefore, the project will provide services for eight total years. Project goals are to: (1) Recruit and award scholarships to 20 students in four cohorts; 25% of scholars will be community college transfer students. (2) Educate teacher candidates in research-based equitable teaching practices and strong content pedagogy. (3) Place, support, and retain 75% of scholar alumni during their four-year high-need school teaching induction service commitment. The project's theoretical basis is that through the implementation and fostering of STEM teacher recruitment from within the community along with culturally responsive preparation, more persons from underrepresented groups in STEM will be attracted to STEM high school teaching, gain expertise in culturally responsive STEM pedagogy, and persist as STEM educators. The project evaluation will measure the impact of high-impact practices on students in STEM teaching pathways. The project's intellectual merit includes a contribution to the knowledge base on which project aspects yield continued integration of culturally responsive teaching and teacher retention. The cohort and mentorship models from the scholars' first years of teaching may contribute to the knowledge base of how these activities influence STEM teacher persistence. This Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends 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.