- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # 1758507
- First Name Ann
- Last Name Cavallo
- Registration Faculty/Administrator/Other
- Discipline Chemistry, Computer Science, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Physics
- Role Principal Investigator (PI)
- Presenters
Ann Cavallo, Greg Hale, Ramon Lopez, Carter Tiernan; The University of Texas at Arlington
Need
The collaborative team at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) has managed and conducted research and evaluation on the impacts of our Robert Noyce Scholarship programs over the past 15 years. The evaluation program collects and provides significant information our Noyce Scholars in urban, high-need school districts. These data provide patterns of successful practices and reveal areas of challenge. The results of our evaluation program will be shared with the Noyce community as we work together to build and maintain successful Noyce projects and prepare and retain high quality STEM teachers.
Research Questions
1.What practices are shown to be most successful in recruiting, preparing, inducting, and supporting Noyce Scholars in high-need urban school districts?2.What is shown to be the most critical challenges in the Noyce Scholarship program and how have challenges been overcome?3.What additional research is needed to inform the field of STEM education and provide continued support for our teachers?
Approach
This poster will present our recruitment, preparation, induction, and continued support strategies for the Robert Noyce Scholarship program at UTA. Evaluation results will be presented indicating areas of success and challenges to the Noyce Scholarship program and how addressed. Methods for collecting data include maintaining a database on Scholars that tracks demographic information, such as year of graduation/program completion, STEM subject area, GPA upon graduation, along with the schools, districts, and high-need data where Scholars are teaching. The evaluation program administers surveys and gathers open-ended information from our Noyce Scholars measuring math and science teaching self-efficacy, primary teaching practices as inquiry based versus didactic, and views of the nature of science and mathematics at three points in time: pre-program, mid-program (at graduation), and post-program (after teaching at least 1 year). These data along with and school-based Mentor Teacher evaluations will be presented, as well as implications to Noyce Scholarship programs and the STEM education community.
Outcomes
The findings from research and evaluation of the Robert Noyce program embedded in our STEM teacher education program demonstrated a 3-5-fold increase in recruitment through graduation of STEM teachers. Research and evaluation have allowed us to focus on continuous improvement of our Noyce programs, such that we have built a successful induction program as reported by Scholars and school-based Mentor Teachers. In addition, our research program measuring 1) self-efficacy toward teaching math or science, 2) primary teaching procedures (as inquiry versus didactic), and 3) views of the nature of science and math as being evidence-based and using reasoning and problem solving rather than opinion, all show positive increases from pre-program to mid-program (upon graduation); however, decreases from graduation to at least year of classroom teaching. We continue to examine shifts in these variables, particularly with respect to explanations for observed patterns. The data analyses, interpretations, and explanations will guide our continued research and provide insights for new and ongoing Noyce programs.
Broader Impacts
Broader impacts include sharing evaluation results of four Noyce Scholarship programs, with 192 Noyce Scholars who have graduated, with most still teaching in high need schools. These teachers are positively impacting the STEM learning of hundreds of economically disadvantaged students each year. Findings from our research and evaluation program will be shared with other Noyce programs to inform the community of successful practices and offer solutions on overcoming challenges, as well as suggest directions for new research.
