- Year 2016
- NSF Noyce Award # 934921
- First Name Valerie
- Last Name Otero
- Discipline All
- Co-PI(s)
Laurie Langdon, University of Colorado Boulder, Laurie.Langdon@colorado.edu
- Presenters
Laurie Langdon, University of Colorado Boulder, Laurie.Langdon@colorado.edu
Need
The Teacher Research Team (TRT) program was designed to simultaneously address science and math teacher recruitment and preparation, new teacher induction, and development of teacher researchers and leaders. Participants include Noyce scholars and new teachers (NSF award 1240073), Master Teaching Fellows (NSF awards 0934921 and 1340083), and teacher educators. Teams that include future teachers, new teachers, experienced teachers, and teacher educators investigate problems of practice in their classrooms and develop evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning.
Goals
The main goals of Teacher Research Teams are to: (a) prepare future teachers for their first year of teaching, (b) retain new teachers, many of whom are former Noyce scholars, (c) develop master teacher-leaders with agency for educational change and voice in the national dialogue, and (d) build practical, up-to-date perspectives and practices among teacher educators.
TRTs engage in publishable educational research on problems of practice identified by each team. Each team gives presentations at national conferences, publishes peer-reviewed papers, and provides workshops for other teachers. To accomplish these activities: (a) future teachers spend time each week in their teammates’ high-needs classrooms to help collect data, (b) teams meet twice per month to work on their research, (c) and the entire TRT community meets twice per semester to share research and provide feedback across teams. In addition, Noyce scholars meet twice per semester to establish and maintain their own community that addresses their needs as future teachers, and Master Teaching Fellows meet twice per month to discuss their practice, and to share and provide feedback on research, conference presentations, and workshops they are developing. Other teachers involved in the program are invited to participate in these communities as well.
Approach
The TRT program provides Master Teaching Fellows and other experienced teachers with opportunities to be directly involved in the preparation of future teachers. Teacher education programs are traditionally located within universities, and involve contexts that are far removed from the day-to-day realities of teaching in public schools. Yet, many experienced and knowledgeable teachers who are deeply engaged in the day-to-day realities do not have time or resources to participate fully in teacher preparation. Teacher educators, practicing teachers, and prospective teachers have much to learn from one another and have much to learn from studying the contexts in which they work, and this is the opportunity that the TRT model was designed to address. The practice of cultivating new teachers however, should not serve as yet one more responsibility for teachers but instead should serve as the very activity that makes novice and veteran teachers’ work more manageable, enhances their understanding of effective practices, and increases job satisfaction and retention. At the same time, the participation of teacher educators and future teacher educators (doctoral students) in teacher preparation should not be as expert knowers, but instead as expert learners in a TRT community that has yet to fully, empirically understand how to best prepare teachers. The design of the TRT experience is to engage a diversity of skills, interests, and people in building practical and testable knowledge about equitable and accessible STEM learning environments.
Outcomes
The TRT experience has led to teachers taking on new roles as teacher-leaders. Some emerging teacher-leaders are requesting funding to work part time as researchers and part time as teachers. Preliminary findings indicate that through the TRT experience, teachers develop agency as educational leaders as evidenced by agenda setting, email thread origins, and statements about leadership and agency (Van Dusen, Ross, & Otero, 2011). Their presentations at conferences increased from 0.33 per teacher in the year that the program began (2010), to 2.7 per teacher in 2013, in which the 9 teachers gave a total of 24 talks, workshops, and papers. Evidence that teachers are inducing principles about teaching and learning from this experience has also been established. For example, Ross, Van Dusen, Sherman, & Otero (2011) documented teachers’ negotiation of the meaning of ‘inquiry.’ They later began providing workshops for other teachers. Noyce scholars value the connections and relationships they make with teachers through TRTs, and they report that they feel more prepared for their first year of teaching in part due to additional time in classrooms beyond their normal practicum experiences. We continue to work on keeping former Noyce scholars involved in the TRT community once they become new teachers, and future plans include working with school districts on ways in which participation in Teacher Research Teams can count toward new teacher induction requirements. We are also collaborating with Front Range Community College to develop new pathways for two-year college students to transfer to the University of Colorado Boulder in order to complete their math or science degree, become Noyce scholars participating in TRTs, and earn their teaching licensure (new NSF award 1557351).
Broader Impacts
At its current scale, the Teacher Research Team project impacts 25 experienced teachers, 5 new teachers, 10 future teachers, and 4 teacher educators per year. Current and future students also benefit from their teachers’ investigations into making classrooms more effective and inclusive for all learners.
