The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program

NSF
NSF
  • Home
  • The Program
    • NSF Noyce Program Directors
    • NSF Noyce Program Solicitation
    • Consider Becoming an NSF Noyce Principal Investigator
    • Become a Noyce Scholar or Teacher Leader
      • Noyce Scholar Profiles
      • Noyce Alumni Profiles
    • Voices From the Field Videos
  • Project Locator
    • Select from Map
    • Advanced Search
    • Submit Information
  • In the News
    • In the News
  • Meetings
    • 2022 Noyce Summit
    • 2021 Noyce Summer Events
    • 2020 Virtual Noyce Summit
    • Archived Noyce Summit Materials
    • Noyce Regional Meetings
  • Resources
    • Noyce Track 4 Research Book
    • Proposal Preparation Toolkit
    • Noyce Project Videos
    • Noyce Summit Abstract Catalogs
    • Reports
    • Toolkits
    • ARISE Research Community
  • Contact

Preparing Reform- and Equity-Minded Secondary Science and Mathematics Teachers: A Study Across Six Teacher Education Programs

  • Year 2018
  • NSF Noyce Award # 1557283
  • First Name Trish
  • Last Name Stoddart
  • Discipline Other: Science and Mathematics Education
  • Co-PI(s)

    Elisa Stone, University of California, Berkeley, emstone@berkeley.edu
    Alan J. Daly, University of California, San Diego, ajdaly@ucsd.edu
    Sandra J. Carlson, University of California, Davis, sjcarlson@ucdavis.edu
    Julie A. Bianchini, University of California, Santa Barbara, jbianchi@ucsb.edu

  • Presenters

    Alexandria Hansen, University of California, Santa Barbara, alexandria.killian@gmail.com
    Stacey Carpenter, University of California, Santa Barbara, scarpenter@education.ucsb.edu
    Julie Bianchini, University of California, Santa Barbara, jbianchi@ucsb.edu
    Elisa Stone, University of California, Berkeley, emstone@berkeley.edu
    Cheryl Forbes, University of California, San Diego, cforbes@ucsd.edu
    Erik Arevalo, University of California, Santa Barbara, erik_arevalo@ucsb.edu
    Meghan Macias, University of California, Santa Barbara, mfmacias23@gmail.com
    Andrew Matschiner, University of California, San Diego, amatschi@ucsd.edu
    Maryam Moeini, University of California, Berkeley, mmoeinimeybodi@berkeley.edu

Need

SMTRI is a Phase IV Noyce award. It addresses a critical challenge in STEM education: to investigate how to prepare beginning secondary science and mathematics teachers to provide effective instruction to an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse student population. The SMTRI project brings together researchers from six University of California (UC) campuses to examine the impact of a UC undergraduate STEM education program (CalTeach) and graduate programs of teacher education on the development of beginning teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices in secondary science and mathematics education. More specifically, it examines the efficacy of UC programs in preparing beginning teachers to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CSSS-M), particularly as they relate to the teaching of English learners (ELs).

Goals

As introduced above, the goal of SMTRI is to contribute to the knowledge base on how to prepare beginning science and mathematics teachers to effectively teach all students, including ELs, in high-needs secondary schools in California. To do so, we are following beginning teachers from each of six UC campuses across their preservice year and into their first and second years of teaching. Here, we focus on a subset of preservice science teachers from Year 1 of our study (2016-2017). We have two primary research questions: How did the preservice science teachers’ understanding of reform-minded teaching change over the course of their program? How did preservice teachers conceive of students? funds of knowledge and resources in connection to their classroom teaching?

Approach

Our conceptual framework consists of two parts. One, the recent NGSS and CCSS-M provide a new vision for science and mathematics education in the U.S.; these reforms call for engaging students in disciplinary-specific practices to reason and make sense of content. Two, our understanding of effective instruction for ELs was informed by four key principles, including building on and using students? funds of knowledge and resources. This principle asks beginning teachers both to use?ELs??home languages as a resource for learning and to recognize the diversity of?ELs??interests, experiences, and connections to the community. Our data collection efforts include administering surveys, conducting interviews, and collecting video records of classroom instruction. Here, we qualitatively analyzed pre- and post-interviews conducted with six of the 49 preservice teachers who participated in Year 1. Each of these six spoke at least two languages and drew from experiences in at least two cultures.

Outcomes

Our six preservice science teacher participants showed an increase in their awareness and ability to enact reform- and equity-minded instruction over the course of the program. Participants reflected on their own backgrounds and discussed the impact of their experiences with diverse languages and cultures on their teaching. In their post-interviews, preservice teachers also discussed more examples of each of the four principles of effective EL instruction than in their pre-interviews: attending to academic language demands and supports, providing cognitively demanding work, engaging students in language production opportunities, and drawing from students’ funds of knowledge and resources. However, while participants discussed more examples of using students’ funds of knowledge and resources in the post-interview, they more often attended to students’ prior knowledge and everyday life rather than students’ home life and language, culture, and community resources.

Broader Impacts

This work contributes to our understanding of how to improve the preparation of beginning secondary science and mathematics teachers: to identify program structures, principles, and strategies that are effective in supporting beginning teachers to implement the new standards and to teach all students, including ELs. Next steps of this work involve analysis of interview data from all participating beginning teachers; examination of interview data in interaction with surveys and video records of classroom instruction; and comparison of the knowledge, beliefs, and practices held by participants as preservice teachers versus as first- and second-year teachers.

What’s New

  • 2022 Noyce Summit
  • Noyce by the Numbers: 20 Years of Noyce
  • Proposal Preparation Webinars
  • Frequently Asked Questions for the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program
  • Become a Noyce Scholar or Teacher Leader
  • Consider Becoming an NSF Noyce Principal Investigator
  • Noyce Alumni: Where Are They Now?

Check out our ARISE website for research & opportunities!

Checking In

NSF

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant Numbers DUE-2041597 and DUE-1548986. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

AAAS

The World's Largest General Scientific Society

  • About Noyce Program
  • AAAS ISEED
  • Subscribe to ARISE
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
© 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science