- Year 2016
- NSF Noyce Award # 1136442
- First Name Frederick
- Last Name Freking
- Discipline Biology
- Co-PI(s)
Anthony Maddox
, University of Southern California; Sue Oh
, University of Southern California; Doug Capone,
University of Southern California; Michael Escalante, University of Southern California - Presenters
Frederick W. Freking
,University of Southern California, freking@usc.edu
Need
Many STEM teachers do not always have an abundance of reform minded colleagues at their school sites and need a venue to discuss key issues with their peers, especially with the onset of new standards. Based on the success and lessons learned from the Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STELLA) Project, the USC STEM Teacher Video Club provides NGSS preparation to beginning Noyce candidates (Roth et al,2011). STEM Teachers in Professional Learning Communities: From Good Teachers to Great Teaching recommend developing a STEM teaching community that shares 6 principles: 1) Shared Values and Goals; 2) Collective Responsibility; 3) Authentic Assessment; 4) Self-Directed Reflection; 5) Stable Settings; and 6) Strong Leadership Support. In our STEM cohort, teams of teachers take turns presenting their STEM teaching lessons and videos. The online community of STEM teacher practice provides feedback using a co-constructed rubrics, aligned to NGSS (EQUIP rubric) and based on the EdTPA planning, instruction and assessment rubrics. The EQUIP rubric will guide the CoP in their unit planning. The EdTPA rubrics expect STEM teachers to integrate mathematics and science and engineering practices into their instruction and use a five-point scale to differentiate the teaching. Each teacher candidate presents three times each term to receive feedback on their STEM planning, instruction and assessment and learn through participation in the online community of practice when their colleagues present their STEM lesson plans, videos and assessments.
Goals
The STEM Teacher Video Club is embedded into our Noyce monthly seminar. Since the USC Rossier School of Education MAT Program is both online and on ground, we have used a hybrid model to implement our community of STEM teacher practice. This poster will demonstrate how we use web-based software developed by Edthena to view, share and comment on STEM teacher practice. This presentation will also share student feedback on the value and effectiveness of participating in a STEM teacher video club.
Approach
All of the Noyce Scholars in the STEM teacher video club are beginning teachers. Supporting beginning teachers is a very difficult business. It is critical to push beginning teachers so they develop the teaching skills necessary for K-12 students to learn and understand STEM concepts and practices. The constructive criticism must be balanced with encouragement and realistic expectations. We hope to improve our STEM Teacher Video club so that the right balance of feedback is provided for each beginning teacher candidate.
Outcomes
STEM teacher support is critical to retention. We believe that our STEM Teacher Video Club will also help prepare beginning teachers by creating an online community of practice. We have piloted Ethena this past Spring and will be analyzing Noyce candidate feedback in the early summer as we prepare for our final year. Preliminary analysis suggests that Noyce scholars are exited to learn from each other by discussing videos of STEM teacher practice. We hope to learn which types of scaffolds are necessary for teacher development from the pilot and use the lessons next year. We plan to share this information at the Noyce and ASTE conferences.
Broader Impacts
All beginning teachers need support to develop their practice. This project is examining the merit of an online community of practice and its’ role in teacher development. The literature is rich in descriptions of professional learning communities and this project is developing these ideas for online learning. All of our Noyce Scholars participate in online learning opportunities, focused on science teacher practice. As we enter the final year of our Noyce Program, it will be interesting to compare our online Noyce Scholars to the larger Noyce Community, in terms of recruitment, preparation and retention. This poster focuses on the impact of the Science Teacher Video Club.
