- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # 2345129
- First Name John
- Last Name Settlage
- Institution University of Connecticut
- Role/Position Principal Investigator (PI)
- Proposal Type Workshop
- Workshop Category Track 4: Noyce Research
- Workshop Disciplines Audience STEM Education (general)
- Target Audience Co-PIs, Other Faculty/Staff, Project PIs
- Topics Lessons learned from developing/implementing a Track 1 project / Track 2 project / Track 3 project / or Track 4 Research project
- Additional Presenter(s)
Heather Johnson, heather.j.johnson@vanderbilt.edu
Goals
(a) Recognize mutually beneficial possibilities between Track 4 research and other Noyce tracks. (b) Become aware of varied ways to frame Track 4 projects that investigate STEM teacher retention/effectiveness.
Evidence
Evidence will be presented from previous efforts including an earlier Track 4 and a Capacity Building project. Theories and frameworks used to structure and adapt those projects will be shared with other PIs.
Proposal
An implicit goal of Noyce Track 4 is researching STEM teacher development to inform and enrich efforts in the other tracks. This creates important opportunities to investigate individual, organizational, and programmatic influences on STEM teacher education, with a perpetual focus on high-need settings. The PIs of this workshop have directed Noyce scholarship projects in the past; more recently they have translated those experiences into Track 4 investigations. We intend to highlight the process we went through leading to funded Track 4 projects as inspiration for other potential PIs. While “STEM teacher effectiveness and retention” was in the background, that emphasis as a funding stipulation fostered innovative approaches and unique collaborations. One project is a collaborative investigation across multiple states to identify ways in which an equity-oriented approach to video analysis of classroom teaching supports the preparation and retention of effective STEM teachers. Another project integrates equity concerns with ecological theories and tools to study STEM teachers throughout a single state to identify systems factors associated with the distribution of effective teachers along with the varying rates of retention over time. This is analogous to competitions where chefs must incorporate an unexpected ingredient to produce a meal: What might YOU research about STEM teacher retention and effectiveness within high-needs settings and while centering equity?
