- Year 2023
- NSF Noyce Award # 2150649
- First Name Douglas
- Last Name Larkin
- Discipline Other: Science teacher education
- Co-PI(s)
Mika Munakata, Montclair State University; PJ Ricatto, Bergen Community College
- Presenters
Douglas Larkin
Need
The Noyce STEM-4-STEM teacher internship is a partnership between Montclair State University, Bergen Community College, and Hackensack Public schools to develop the capacity for teacher candidates. This particular teacher internship is important because it provides community college students with a paid opportunity to consider teaching STEM in a high-need high school. There is currently little research on supporting STEM teachers from 2-year to 4-year institutions.
Goals
How do we create a bridge between 2-year community college programs and teacher certification programs in a 4-year public university?
Approach
We have started the Noyce Teacher Internship program in partnership with the Hackensack Public School District in order to offer prospective students an opportunity to complete 30 hours of observation in a partner school district. We conducted one online recruitment session for this opportunity and the three selected students (along with the PIs) visited Hackensack High School for an orientation day in November, 2022 and another 5 visited in March 2023. While not initially designed as a research-practice partnership, in many ways this project is functioning as such. Further detail will be on the poster.
Outcomes
Outcomes so far (this effort just began in Nov. 2022) are that eight community college students have been through an orientation, and we expect seven to have completed their 30 observation hours by June.
Broader Impacts
In this project, we are learning about the particular needs of STEM-focused community college students, and the supports they require to enter a tea her education program at a four-year insitution. This is only part of our larger STEM teacher education efforts.
