- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1557384
- First Name Salvatore
- Last Name Garofalo
- Institution Queens College, CUNY
- Role/Position Co-PI
- Workshop Category Track 4: Noyce Research
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Other: Science Education
- Target Audience Higher Education Institution Administrators, Project PIs / Co-PIs / Other Faculty/Staff, School and District Administrators
- Topics Preparing Teachers for High-Need School Districts
- Session Length 30 minutes
- Additional Presenter(s)
Stephen Farenga, sfarenga@qc.cuny.edu, Queens College, PI;
Gopal Subramaniam, gopal.subramaniam@qc.cuny.edu, Queens College, Co-PI;
David Laurenson, david.laurenson@qc.cuny.edu, Queens College, Project Director
Goals
1. To analyze whether receiving constructive criticism from multiple discipline-specific field supervisors/mentors increases the resiliency of science teacher candidates.
2. To explore the benefit of team field supervision for formative assessment of pedagogical and science-specific content knowledge and scaffolding of instructional and assessment strategies.
Evidence
The preliminary investigation gathered data on the efficacy of discipline-specific team supervisors on the development of highly trained science educators. The evidence includes field evaluations by science supervisors, cooperating teachers, and debriefing notes with science teacher education candidates. Additional evidence is provided by minutes from weekly meetings among field supervisors that explore comparative observations. In this study there was no manipulation of the environment or activities other than those manifested in the required feedback to teacher candidates during debriefing situations with mentor teachers.
Proposal
The purpose of this presentation is to elucidate observations from the field by full-time, discipline-specific team field science educators. Teachers are increasingly being evaluated by parents and administrators for tenure, merit pay, and promotion. The process of gathering external, unbiased observer feedback in regard to one’s instructional performance is therefore an invaluable experience for successful entry and retention within science education. It is evident based on the number of teachers who leave the field within the first three years that the usual pattern of teacher preparation and mentoring may not be efficient. We analyze whether receiving constructive criticism from multiple discipline-specific field supervisors/mentors increases the resiliency of science teacher candidates. This study also seeks to explore the benefit of team field supervision for formative assessment of pedagogical and science-specific content knowledge and scaffolding of instructional and assessment strategies. The development of teacher effectiveness requires comprehensive efforts of individuals who must understand teaching as a whole. Teaching and the evaluation of good teaching are probably some of the most complex human endeavors. Teacher preparatory programs aim to provide the beginning teacher with a repertoire of behaviors that extend beyond the basic area of teaching and learning in order to meet the variety of challenges present in the modern classroom. However, science education programs in particular must also provide meaningful discipline-specific pedagogical content knowledge covering a minimum of four distinct science subjects. Therefore, the science-specific background of the field supervisor is imperative to assess content complexity and appropriate content-specific pedagogical methodology.
