STEM teacher training: challenges and successes along the K-20 teacher pipeline
Abstract Not Provided
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
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Engineering for Teachers: A Case Study of Professional Development for K-12 STEM Teachers.
Abstract not provided.
Tran, Hy D.↗
iSTEM Summer Institute: An Integrated Approach to Teacher Professional Development inSTEM
The importance of STEM education to our national prosperity and global competitiveness was recently reinforced by the Obama administration support for Change the Equation. Change the Equation is a multi-entity initiative formed in response to the rapidly increasing demand for STEM related careers and the potential lack of preparation by many Americans to be employed in these positions. To address the issue many are calling for increased emphasis on K-12 STEM education, as early preparation in STEM provides the foundation essential for further learning and competencies (National Research Council, 2007). Achieving and sustaining depth and breadth of K-12 STEM education is inextricably linked to ongoing professional development of K-12 educators. The need for teacher continuing education in STEM education and the link between teacher effectiveness and student preparation in STEM was the impetus behind our i- STEM professional development summer institute. The i-STEM initiative is a collaborative effort between business, industry, government, K-12, and higher education. Although the organization is working on a number of projects, including policy, research, communication, and collaborations, the i-STEM group has directed significant resources toward K-12 educator professional development opportunities in STEM. Our report focuses on the structure and impact of the intensive four-day i-STEM residential professional development institute which we designed to increase the capacity of grade 4-9 teachers to teach STEM content. We structured the summer institute using the outcome of a survey we conducted of grade 4-9 teachers’ to assess their STEM professional development needs, the extant literature on teacher development, the increasing need for a STEM informed society, and our desire to use evidence based practices to enhance teacher capacity to teach STEM content. We developed this investigation to determine if our summer institute influenced the participating teachers comfort with teaching STEM, efficacy for teaching STEM, content knowledge of STEM, inquiry implementation in STEM, and perceptions of STEM education. These parameters in-part have been gathered previously for specific areas of math or science education, but we are not aware of any study in which these variables have been attended to and assessed in the context of enhancing inservice teacher preparation to teach STEM. Therefore, our project provides a unique contribution to the literature because of our focus on STEM education and our adaptation and use of an array of assessment tools to measure the impact on our participants’ perceptions of teaching STEM, affective perspectives, and knowledge of the related content. Further, we are responding to the position of Putnam and Borko (2000) who contend there has been a dearth of attention paid toward creating teacher professional development experiences consistent with the teacher learning and investigations of the impact of the experience on the participating educators. Before we present our research and results, we discuss the relevant literature establishing the justification for our study. Following the presentation of our study results we discuss the related implications and directions for future research. We conclude with a discussion of study limitations and some closing remarks of our study contributions to the field of teacher professional development in STEM education.
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Actualizing Change after Experiencing Significant Mathematics PD: Hearing from Teachers of Color about Their Practice and Mathematical Identities
While it is well-documented that students of color and students from low-income communities have often been denied access to a challenging education in mathematics in the United States, less is known about how teachers of color have overcome their deprived educational backgrounds to become teachers of mathematics who implement inquiry-based instructional methods as a means to improve their students’ learning and mathematical identities. In this article, we use a sociopolitical theoretical framework to examine how seven elementary school teachers of color characterized their experiences as mathematics students, themselves as teachers of mathematics, and their mathematical identities after experiencing significant professional development in mathematics. All the participants in this study had experienced extensive professional development support in mathematics over a sustained period of time. We demonstrate through the teachers’ narratives that, given the deprived mathematics education that the majority of the participants experienced as PK-12 students, having opportunities to participate in significant and focused PD in mathematics over a sustained period transformed how teachers viewed themselves as teachers and positively impacted their mathematical identities.
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
Physical Education Teachers’ Representations of Their Training to Promote the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities
School inclusion is based on the need to adopt and implement a holistic view of education, training, and human development embodied in the idea of everyone, for everyone. In the context of Physical Education (PE), there are still several constraints to the realization of this universal desideratum. Among these, teacher training and qualification for the inclusion of students with Specific Health Needs (SHNs) stands out. That is, students with physical and mental health problems whose impact is significantly manifested in the learning process. Thus, the objective of this study was to identify the representations of PE teachers about their training to develop inclusive processes with students with SES. Participants in this study were 151 PE teachers from different regions and districts of Portugal (Algarve, Aveiro, Castelo Branco, Lisbon, Porto, and Viseu) who had 23.6 ± 8.1 years of teaching service. Teachers answered an online questionnaire, on the Google Forms platform, with open and closed questions about their education and training to develop inclusive processes in PE. The results indicate two significant dimensions: (1) initial training for teaching inclusive PE and (2) continuous training for inclusion. Regarding initial training, a large majority of the teachers under study, at the end of their initial training, did not have the essential skills to teach PE to students with SES. It was also identified that a large majority reported not having had any contact with students with SES throughout their training process for teaching. It was also recognized that this training was not adjusted to the development of intervention skills with students with SHN. Regarding continuous training, it was identified that attendance at this training increased their skills to teach PE to students with SHN. Workshops/actions/training courses are the main training models adopted. However, it is recognized that the training provided does not respond concretely to their training needs to intervene with students with SHN, since teachers essentially seek to improve intervention in the context of inclusive physical education. We conclude that teacher training for inclusion is not yet fully adjusted to the reality of the inclusive school paradigm. In this sense, in practical terms, the following are suggested: (1) the need for reinforcement in study plans with specific and long-term curricular units; (2) the introduction of real practice components in context; and (3) supervised pedagogical practice in diverse contexts.
Celestino, Tadeu (ORCID:0000000163087981)↗
Influence of Karen Immigrant Students on Teachers’ Instructional Decisions in the Rural United States
Across the United States, the number of classrooms welcoming young students who are new English language learners (ELL) is rapidly growing. Motivated by a dramatic increase in the number of Myanmar- and Burma-originating immigrants now attending English-speaking schools in the rural, upper midwestern United States, this study systematically considers how the presence of Karen immigrant students impacts the instructional decisions that K-12 classroom teachers make using an exploratory case study method. Several recurrent themes emerged, and findings can be used to help better prepare both pre-service and in-service teachers to meet the needs of their ELL students, as well as policy makers. These emergent themes include the following: (a) authentic teacher–family relationships are key; (b) visual/hands-on learning and the use of technology enhance student achievement; (c) student work must be completed during the school day in classrooms; (d) teachers’ purposeful use of parallel language is critical for learning; (e) rigor can be maintained, although quantity is often adjusted; and (f) targeted ESL/cultural training for pre-service and newly hired teachers is positively influential. Such informed training often seems to help teachers learn key cultural distinctions and become better able to identify the most effective ways to meet the needs of students.
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Assessment of work-integrated learning: comparison of the usage of a grading rubric by supervising radiographers and teachers
Introduction: Professional work-integrated learning (WIL) that integrates the academic experience with off-campus professional experience placements is an integral part of many tertiary courses. Issues with the reliability and validity of assessment grades in these placements suggest that there is a need to strengthen the level of academic rigour of placements in these programmes. This study aims to compare the attitudes to the usage of assessment rubrics of radiographers supervising medical imaging students and teachers supervising pre-service teachers. Methods: WIL placement assessment practices in two programmes, pre-service teacher training (Avondale College of Higher Education, NSW) and medical diagnostic radiography (Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, NSW), were compared with a view to comparing assessment strategies across these two different educational domains. Educators (course coordinators) responsible for teaching professional development placements of teacher trainees and diagnostic radiography students developed a standards-based grading rubric designed to guide assessment of students’ work during WIL placement by assessors. After ∼12 months of implementation of the rubrics, assessors’ reaction to the effectiveness and usefulness of the grading rubric was determined using a specially created survey form. Data were collected over the period from March to June 2011. Quantitative and qualitative data found that assessors in both programmes considered the grading rubric to be a vital tool in the assessment process, though teacher supervisors were more positive about the benefits of its use than the radiographer supervisors. Results: Benefits of the grading rubric included accuracy and consistency of grading, ability to identify specific areas of desired development and facilitation of the provision of supervisor feedback. The use of assessment grading rubrics is of benefit to assessors in WIL placements from two very different teaching programmes. Conclusion: Radiographers appear to need more training in the rubric's use, whereas teachers are found to generally use it appropriately. There are implications drawn from this finding that are applicable to health science and medical education in general.
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
Teachers’ Beliefs and Their Influence on Math Instructions for Gifted English Learners
The dynamic interplay between teachers’ beliefs and practices significantly impact the quality of instruction and the trajectory of talent development in young students. This case study explores the beliefs and practices of two elementary teachers instructing gifted ELs in mathematics. The constant comparison method was used to analyze data collected from classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and field notes. Three factors were found to affect the (in)consistency between teachers’ expressed beliefs and observed practices: compatibility among core and peripheral beliefs, knowledge about evidence-based practices, and classroom management skills. Students exhibit higher levels of participation, communication, and engagement in critical thinking skills when their teacher embraces constructive perspectives in teaching mathematics, demonstrates pedagogical expertise, and employs a proactive classroom management approach. Conversely, students encounter restricted opportunities to independently construct their own understanding of mathematics when their teacher holds maladaptive beliefs about teaching mathematics, has limited knowledge of evidence-based practices, and has an authoritarian classroom management style. These findings underscore the need for a new approach to professional development (PD) that encourages teachers to critically examine the connection between their beliefs and instructional practices and their impact on the student’s mathematical talent development.
Yang, Jenny (ORCID:0000000296905466)↗
Teacher-student training improves the accuracy and efficiency of machine learning interatomic potentials
Machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) are revolutionizing the field of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Recent MLIPs have tended towards more complex architectures trained on larger datasets. The resulting increase in computational and memory costs may prohibit the application of these MLIPs to perform large-scale MD simulations. Herein, we present a teacher-student training framework in which the latent knowledge from the teacher (atomic energies) is used to augment the students' training. We show that the light-weight student MLIPs have faster MD speeds at a fraction of the memory footprint compared to the teacher models. Remarkably, the student models can even surpass the accuracy of the teachers, even though both are trained on the same quantum chemistry dataset. Our work highlights a practical method for MLIPs to reduce the resources required for large-scale MD simulations.
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Place Based STEM: Leveraging Local Resources to Engage K-12 Teachers in Teaching Integrated STEM and for Addressing the Local STEM Pipeline
Business, industry, parks, nature settings, government infrastructure, and people, can be invaluable resources for connecting STEM curriculum within context which results in conditions ideal for promoting purposeful learning of authentic STEM content. Thus, community-based STEM resources offer ideal context for teaching STEM content. A benefit of focusing teacher attention on these contextual, content aligned resources is that they are in every community; making place-based STEM education a possibility, regardless of the location of STEM teaching and learning. Further, associating STEM teaching and learning with local resources addresses workforce development and the STEM pipeline by exposing students to STEM careers and applications in their local communities. The desire to align STEM teaching and learning with local STEM related resources guided the design of our week-long integrated STEM K-12 teacher professional development (PD) program, i-STEM. We have completed four years of our i-STEM PD program and have made place-based STEM a major emphasis of our curriculum. This report focuses on the data collected in the fourth year of our program. Our week-long i-STEM PD served over 425 educators last summer (2013), providing them with in depth theme-based integrated STEM short courses which were limited to an average of 15 participants and whole group plenary sessions focused around placed based integrated STEM, inquiry, engineering design, standards and practices of Common Core and 21st Century skills. This state wide PD was distributed in five Idaho community colleges and took place over two weeks. The STEM short courses included topics on engineering for sustainability, using engineering to spark interest in STEM, municipal water systems, health, agriculture, food safety, mining, forestry, energy, and others. Integral to these short courses were field trips designed to connect the K-12 educators to the resources in their local communities that could be leveraged for teaching integrated STEM and provide a relevant context for teaching STEM content. Workplace presentations made by place-based STEM experts and provided teachers field trips to place-base STEM industries and business such as manufacturing plants, waste water treatment systems, mines, nature parks, food processing plants, research, hospitals, and laboratory facilities. We researched the 425 participants’ conceptions of place-based STEM prior to and after their taking part in the summer institutes, which included fieldtrips. Our findings revealed substantial increase in our participants’ knowledge, interest, and plans to use place-based resources for teaching integrated STEM. We detail the data analysis and provide a theoretical foundation and justification for the importance of place-based STEM to address the STEM pipeline for the future workforce.
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Putting the Pieces Together: A Model K-12 Teachers’ Innovation Implementation Behaviors
Kindergarten through grade 12 teacher engagement in STEM teaching is a complex interaction of multiple variables that are likely influenced by their interactions and contribute at different levels in the predication of how likely and to what extent teachers engage in STEM teaching. To test a model of K-12 teacher engagement in STEM teaching we gathered a range of data aligned with variables including teaching to core STEM practice, teaching of 21st century skills, teaching with instructional technology, engagement in place-based STEM, comfort teaching STEM, and number of college level math and science courses. Results will be shared at the conference.
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The establisment of an achievement test for determination of primary teachers’ knowledge level of earthquake
In this study it was aimed to improve an academic achievement test to establish the students’ knowledge about the earthquake and the ways of protection from earthquakes. In the method of this study, the steps that Webb (1994) was created to improve an academic achievement test for a unit were followed. In the developmental process of multiple choice test having 25 questions, was prepared to measure the pre-service teachers’ knowledge levels about the earthquake and the ways of protection from earthquakes. The multiple choice test was presented to view of six academics (one of them was from geographic field and five of them were science educator) and two expert teachers in science Prepared test was applied to 93 pre-service teachers studying in elementary education department in 2014-2015 academic years. As a result of validity and reliability of the study, the test was composed of 20 items. As a result of these applications, Pearson Moments Multiplication half-reliability coefficient was found to be 0.94. When this value is adjusted according to Spearman Brown reliability coefficient the reliability coefficient was set at 0.97.
42 ENGINEERING↗
Assessing the Effectiveness and Interactions of Instructional Coaches: Initial Psychometric Evidence for the Instructional Coaching Assessments–Teacher Forms
The conceptual foundation and initial psychometric evidence are provided for the Instructional Coaching Rating Scales and Interaction Style Scales–Teacher Forms. These forms are part of a multicomponent online assessment system designed to evaluate the effectiveness of coaching skills and interactions that support the needs of teachers and students. Specifically, the article presents the theory, evidence, and measurement framework for the system. Findings indicate that the Rating Scales and Interaction Style Scales–Teacher Forms have very good internal structures based on multiple fit statistics for confirmatory factor analyses, high internal consistency, good item-to-scale total correlations, and freedom from item bias. Collectively, this promising statistical evidence is supportive of valid score inferences. Study limitations and directions for research are discussed.
Reddy, Linda A.↗
Forging New, Non-traditional Partnerships Among Physicists, Teachers and Students
The QuarkNet collaboration has forged new, nontraditional relationships among particle physicists, high school teachers and their students. QuarkNet provides professional development for teachers and creates opportunities for teachers and students to engage in particle physics data investigations and join research teams. Embedded in the U.S. particle research community, QuarkNet leverages the nature of particle physics research—the long duration of the experiments with extensive lead times, construction periods, and data collection and analysis periods. QuarkNet is patterned after the large collaborations with a central management infrastructure and a distributed workload across university- and lab-based research groups. Here, we describe the important benefits of the QuarkNet outreach program that flow to university faculty and present successful strategies that others can adapt for use in their countries.
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
Forging new, non-traditional partnerships among physicists, teachers and students
The QuarkNet collaboration has forged new, nontraditional relationships among particle physicists, high school teachers and their students. QuarkNet provides professional development for teachers and creates opportunities for teachers and students to engage in particle physics data investigations and join research teams. Embedded in the U.S. particle research community, QuarkNet leverages the nature of particle physics research$-$the long duration of the experiments with extensive lead times, construction periods, and data collection and analysis periods. QuarkNet is patterned after the large collaborations with a central management infrastructure and a distributed workload across university- and lab-based research groups. As a result, we describe the important benefits of the QuarkNet outreach program that flow to university faculty and present successful strategies that others can adapt for use in their countries.
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
Exploring young adult texts within the Historically Responsive Literacy Framework with preservice teachers
Abstract While culturally responsive texts have become more common in teacher education, too often, preservice teachers (PTs) are not asked to examine how to use these books pedagogically. To address this issue, in a young adult (YA) literature course, the Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL) (Muhammad, 2000) Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literac y, 2020; Scholastic) was used in conjunction with representative and inclusive YA trade books. Data analysis was conducted on PT's course work, including HRL unit plans, to determine whether PTs were able to implement Muhammad's (2020) framework using YA texts. The findings of this study show that PTs' understanding of the HRL tenets was at varying levels. While there were unit plans with learning goals that matched Muhammad's purpose and definition for each tenet and YA connections for every tenet, PTs showed a better understanding of the tenets of identity and intellect than skills and Criticality. Implications of these findings including exposing PTs to learning frameworks “written by people of color and designed for children of color” (Muhammad, 2020, p. 11) to create instruction that meets their future students' needs and does not just skim the surface of culturally responsive pedagogies.
Pule, Heather↗
Semi-supervised Learning of Dynamical Systems with Neural Ordinary Differential Equations: A Teacher-Student Model Approach
Modeling dynamical systems is crucial for a wide range of tasks, but it remains challenging due to complex nonlinear dynamics, limited observations, or lack of prior knowledge. Recently, data-driven approaches such as Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NODE) have shown promising results by leveraging the expressive power of neural networks to model unknown dynamics. However, these approaches often suffer from limited labeled training data, leading to poor generalization and suboptimal predictions. On the other hand, semi-supervised algorithms can utilize abundant unlabeled data and have demonstrated good performance in classification and regression tasks. We propose TS-NODE, the first semi-supervised approach to modeling dynamical systems with NODE. TS-NODE explores cheaply generated synthetic pseudo rollouts to broaden exploration in the state space and to tackle the challenges brought by lack of ground-truth system data under a teacher-student model. TS-NODE employs an unified optimization framework that corrects the teacher model based on the student's feedback while mitigating the potential false system dynamics present in pseudo rollouts. TS-NODE demonstrates significant performance improvements over a baseline Neural ODE model on multiple dynamical system modeling tasks.
Wang, Yu↗
Longitudinal Socio-Emotional Learning Intervention for Autism via Smartglasses: Qualitative School Teacher Descriptions of Practicality, Usability, and Efficacy in General and Special Education Classroom Settings
There is considerable demand for special education services for the over half a million students with autism in the United States. While assistive technology may augment educational services, its implementation is often prevented by a number of practical and attitudinal barriers. These barriers are especially pertinent for the newest and thus least familiar digital systems, such as computerized smartglasses loaded with specialized software modules. Computerized smartglasses are a technology that has already been shown to have an ability to deliver educational interventions through augmented reality. With this in mind, we sought to understand how school educators received and assessed the practicality of a smartglasses-based educational intervention in a single-subject study. The intervention was designed to aid with attention and social educational learning in autism. The intervention was delivered twice a day during a two-week study on a 13-year-old student with autism who was attending a mainstream middle school in Massachusetts. Three different school educators delivered the intervention: the student’s general education teacher, special education teacher, and paraprofessional. Educators recorded their attitudes, the practicality of the technology, and its impact on the student and their classroom through the use of a digital log and a series of in-person interviews. Overall, the school educators experienced a positive view of the smartglasses. The smartglasses intervention was found to be logistically practical to implement, easily usable by both the educator and student, and not time-consuming to learn or implement. Educators also identified the experience as being fun for the student, and felt that the student demonstrated improvement in his verbal and non-verbal skills. There were no adverse effects on the other students or the classroom, and the technology did not result in a distraction. These findings suggest that social skills interventions delivered by smartglasses may be practical, useful, and may lead to improvements in social communication skills. Further research on smartglasses may help to clarify the future role for augmenting special education in students with autism.
Keshav, Neha↗