- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1136442
- First Name Frederick
- Last Name Freking
- Discipline Biology, Chemistry, Geosciences, Physics
- Co-PI(s)
Anthony Maddox, USC, amaddox@usc.edu; Doug Capone, USC, capone@usc.edu
- Presenters
Frederick W. Freking, USC, freking@usc.edu
Need
As we worked to prepare science teachers for the twenty first century, we sought to leverage technology to connect candidates from across the United States. Our Noyce project implemented a synchronous, online platform to support beginning science teachers in their teaching context. Building on our experience preparing science teachers for inner city Los Angeles, we designed a program to prepare science teachers for high-needs schools all across the United States. This poster will share the results of our work recruiting, preparing and retaining fifty Noyce scholars.
Goals
With the development and implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards during the life of our grant, the scientific practices, or inquiry, has been the cornerstone of our work. We have pushed our Noyce Scholars to develop a deep understanding of the nature of science and how to teach their students to use science to understand the world around them.
Approach
The USC Robert Noyce Science Teacher Program has used surveys and focus groups to measure the effectiveness of our program. This qualitative data has very useful to understand the Noyce Scholars’ experiences so that we could better implement and improve our Noyce program. We used the growing literature of developing online communities of practice to guide the design and implementation of our Noyce program.
Outcomes
The USC Robert Noyce Science Teacher Program demonstrated that you can effectively support science teacher preparation through a synchronous online program. There was no significant difference between online and on ground science teacher experiences in our program. Our poster will share how we leveraged technology to support the development of our science teachers. We plan to use the lessons learned from this project to inform the larger science teacher preparation community and to build on this work future cohorts of science teacher candidates.
Broader Impacts
As stated above, our Noyce project adds to the body of literature in the recruitment, preparation and retention of science teachers for high-needs contexts. In particular, we have successfully recruited, prepared and retained fifty science teachers for high-needs contexts using a synchronous, online platform. We plan to share how we leveraged technology to prepare and support our Noyce Scholars so that every science teacher candidate leaves their preparation program ready for their own classroom and connected to other science teachers so that they can handle the challenges of high-needs classrooms.
