- Year 2017
- NSF Noyce Award # 1439900
- First Name Peter
- Last Name Sheppard
- Discipline Other: Education
- Co-PI(s)
Pegge Alciatore, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, pla7994@louisiana.edu
Patricia Beaulieu, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, pwb0555@louisiana.edu
Nathan Dolenc, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, nathan.dolenc@louisiana.edu - Presenters
Nathan Dolenc, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, nathan.dolenc@louisiana.edu
Patricia Beaulieu, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, pwb0555@louisiana.edu
Need
The Strengthening Teacher Education through Mathematics & Science Teaching Scholars (STEMS2) in Louisiana project is attentive to the local, regional and national persistent concern of secondary STEM teacher recruitment, preparation, induction, and retention. The poster focuses on the initial less informal preparation efforts that aims to ease the transition from STEM major to STEM teacher educator. This collaboration leveraged content knowledge possessed by Scholars with the pedagogical knowledge of PIs to engage 3rd grade students in mimicking the biological prowess of selected creatures and exploring fundamentals concepts of mathematics. This aspect of the project proved beneficial for Noyce Scholars, 20 third grade students in our partner district, and PIs of the project.
Goals
In an effort to further build awareness of the education landscape among our STEMS2 scholars and develop them into innovative practitioners, we have created a project-based curriculum development club. The main goal of this STEMS2 scholars’ club, which we have named STEMS2 Circle, is to have our scholars engage in developing a two to three hour interactive, inquiry-based STEM lesson throughout the semester that they eventually teach in a local K-12 public school. A secondary goal of this club is to have our scholars disseminate their curriculum development work at conferences and in peer-reviewed, practitioner journals.
Approach
The STEMS2 Circle uses a project-based learning approach where our scholars are engaged in a sustained, semester long curriculum development project that has real world connections in teaching to K-12 students. Additionally, our scholars work within this project toward developing inquiry-based lessons that have their students answering questions, gathering data, analyzing the data, and making connections to scientific knowledge.
Outcomes
There are four outcomes we look for from this semester long project. We look for increase STEMS2 scholars’ connection between their content background and instruction. In addition, we look for an increase level of engagement of K-12 students. In-service teachers experience a reverse modeling (i.e. Lesson ideas for in-service teachers from pre-service teachers). We look for an increase in our STEMS2 scholars? exposure to the classroom environment. Finally, we look for a broadening of perspection of the education landscape to include disseminating work in practitioner journals.
Broader Impacts
Ultimately, we would like our Scholars to embrace the pedagogical concept of actively engaging in science and mathematics. By embedding this concept early on in Scholars’ pedagogical development we hope that it becomes a staple of their work. In doing so, our scholars could plausibly use such methods with each of the hundreds of K-12 students they are projected to teach which could lead to discernable upticks in K-12 students appreciation and affection for mathematics or one of the sciences.
