- Year 2022
- NSF Noyce Award # 1660557
- First Name Dennis
- Last Name Sunal
- Institution University of Alabama
- Role/Position PI, Professor
- Workshop Category Track 2: Teaching Fellowships
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Biological Sciences
- Target Audience Co-PIs, Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, Other Faculty/Staff, Project PIs, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics Developing Teacher Leaders
- Session Length 45 minutes minutes
- Additional Presenter(s)
Cynthia Sunal
Goals
1.Innovative development of PLC model to address teaching in reformed science classrooms.2.Describe pathways for supporting fellows’ movement from mentee to teacher leader. 3.Identify and describe innovations in evaluation of induction program success in developing teacher leaders.
Evidence
1.Successful development of PLC model into Virtual PLCs with diverse teams bringing in expertise from local settings, science disciplines, and science education.2.Fellows evolved multiple approaches in mentoring fellow colleagues and peer teachers in schools.3.Extensive multiple mixed methods were found to describe growth in science teacher leadership. Program results provided a landscape for the efficacy of this unique and transformative induction model. Participants consistently identified their LIST interaction experiences as a time and space for growth, reflection, strategizing, and collaboration. With emphasis on the PLC experiences, new and experienced teachers put their collective knowledge base into action. The LIST program has the goal of moving its teachers from mentored novices to teacher leaders in the education community. The benefits from the PLC applied to both teaching and learning; the members worked to make instructional changes to their own practice in order to meet the needs of their own students. These experienced novice science teachers also demonstrated increased leadership capacity by presenting at educational conferences, spearheading Zoom work sessions for all PLC members, and mentoring less experienced novice teachers.
Proposal
Developing Leaders in Science Teaching (LIST), is an induction model whose , theoretical grounding is based on learning organization theory as well as self-efficacy theory. Novice teachers become effective educators when they learn and develop professionally along with peers and other experts in the field. Each of 15 Fellows participated in a personalized Professional Learning Community (PLC) throughout their preservice and induction years. Data collected from multiple classroom observations, interviews, and surveys over several years coupled with PLC meeting transcripts, agendas, and lesson ratings were examined to determine this unique induction model’s efficacy. Participants consistently identified their PLC as a time and space for growth, reflection, strategizing, and collaboration. New and experienced teachers used their collective knowledge base in lesson study and practitioner research. The program has the goal of moving its teachers from mentored novices to teacher leaders in the education community through a series of leadership steps. Fellows demonstrated increasing leadership; presenting at professional conferences, spearheading Zoom work sessions for their PLC, and mentoring less experienced novice teachers.
