Preparing Future Secondary STEM Teachers to Integrate Authentic Experiences into their High-Needs Classrooms using Regional Real-World Contexts

The project aims to serve the national need of preparing high-quality secondary preservice Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics teachers who can integrate authentic contexts into their classrooms. The goal of authentic experiences is to model how scientists think about solving a problem. Authentic experiences provide a real-world context when learning state-adopted content standards. These experiences engage students in broadening their critical thinking skills while furthering their understanding of regional real-world STEM issues they will encounter during their studies and after graduation. For teachers to have the ability to create and implement authentic experiences for their students, they will benefit from being engaged in such experiences. This project will provide two real-world summer experiences where preservice teachers will work with university faculty, researchers, and mentor teachers to develop content and pedagogically rich curriculum to implement in their classrooms and field experiences. Likewise, they will develop assessments to explore the impact of the curriculum. High impact teaching practices can lead to higher engagement in STEM and build a strong STEM workforce to address national and global problems in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

This project at Georgia Southern University, a public research university, includes partnerships with Evans County Charter School System, Savannah-Chatham Public School System, Georgia Southern University Botanical Garden and Center for STEM Education, and Skidaway Island Marine Extension. The project has four fundamental goals. First, the project aims to provide K-12 internships for six freshman and sophomore STEM majors to help generate and sustain their interest in teaching. A second goal is to provide scholarships and to graduate eighteen (18) high-achieving undergraduate biology, chemistry, mathematics, or physics majors who are certified to teach in their major areas at the secondary level. A third goal is to place these graduates in high-need school districts and then provide mentoring and other induction support for six years following their graduation. Fourth, the project team will create, implement, study, and maintain an integrated synchronous and asynchronous reflective teaching community of practice model. In the process, the investigators will explore how focused seminar experiences, in addition to program coursework, can impact preservice readiness to successfully complete clinical practice and first-year teaching. Project outcomes will provide insight into how a community of practice model can longitudinally impact program innovation and teacher retention in high-needs schools. In addition, the project will provide strategies for developing and integrating authentic contexts in secondary STEM classrooms. The project also has potential to impact how preservice teacher education programs are structured, how lesson planning strategies are taught, and how mentoring strategies to help preservice teachers develop skills and dispositions to work in high-needs schools are designed. Resources developed and project evaluation findings will be disseminated via regional, state, national, and international sources, including STEM conferences, peer-reviewed publications, and various internet applications. 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.