Many urban New Yorkers believe that the Hudson River is so polluted that nothing could possibly live there. In reality, the estuary is thriving, and The River Project (TRP), a marine science field station in lower Manhattan, exists to showcase its vast biodiversity through place-based education. In 2014, TRP began collaborating on a city-wide initiative with the Billion Oyster Project and nine other partner organizations to integrate restoration science into Title I middle school curricula through the Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS). Teachers in the fellowship program attend science workshops and professional developments opportunities to bring the locally relevant topic of oyster restoration into their classrooms. Through this partnership, TRP has expanded its reach beyond the typical 90-minute field trip experience, fostering relationships with teachers through professional developments workshops and in-classroom lessons to support their students’ project-based learning explorations. This confluence of educational activities created a richer, more meaningful learning experience for teachers, students, and TRP educators.
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Microteaching: An Introspective Case Study with Middle School Teachers in New York City Public Schools
The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential impacts of microteaching on experienced teachersparticipating in the Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS) Teaching Fellowship at Pace Universityas part of a National Science Foundation-funded research project on the education model known as the Curriculum andCommunity Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS). The program builds a learning community of teachers in thefellowship program as they participated in monthly workshops in cohorts and continuously interact with each otherduring the two years of the program. Each teacher in Cohort 1 of the CCERS Fellowship was required to provide a brieflesson that they have used in the classrooms from the CCERS curriculum. Generally, the Teaching Fellows’micro-lessons contained appropriate objectives presented to the class aligned well to the objectives of the CCERSinitiative, which focused on harbor restoration learning within a STEM context. By conducting field studies atrestoration stations that students set up near their schools, students across all schools learned about the biology,chemistry, ecology and history of the Hudson River. In addition to teaching science content, all teachers incorporatedlessons on helping students to develop literacy strategies to build vocabulary. The microteaching modules allowed forteachers to gain insight as to how the curriculum was being implemented into other teachers’ classrooms. It permittedfor teachers’ exposure to the various teaching methods and resources being used to assist underrepresented studentsand students where English is a second language.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1440869
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10074376
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Curriculum and Teaching
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1927-2677
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The Billion Oyster Project and Curriculum and Community Enterprise for the Restoration of New York Harbor with New York City Public Schools (BOP-CCERS) program is a National Science Foundation (NSF) supported initiative and collaboration of multiple institutions and organizations led by Pace University. The NSF project, Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST), had generated a large amount of data through engagement with teachers and students throughout New York City public schools. This article presents the second part to a large data collection study with focus on Underrepresented Minority (URM) student interest in STEM and engagement with teachers to support them in teaching science through experiential learning and lessons that connect science to the real world, particularly through science in the New York Harbor. The first component of the study focused on URM student interest in STEM. This second component of the study focuses on teacher engagement in the program, and what the researchers had learned in the process. Overall, teachers reported very favorable options on the impact of the BOP-CCERS activities as ways to generate student interest in STEM majors and careers. Teacher participants were generally positive about the amount of support and resources they received as members of the project, as well as the oyster-related knowledge and practices they learned to use with their own students in oyster field research. Data from the study provided evidence that the teacher activities were successful and met the project’s goals to provide support and resources for teachers to engage students in oyster restoration research.more » « less
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Abstract The CCERS partnership includes collaborators from universities, foundations, education departments, community organizations, and cultural institutions to build a new curriculum. As reported in a study conducted by the Rand Corporation (2011), partnerships among districts, community-based organizations, government agencies, local funders, and others can strengthen learning programs. The curriculum merged project-based learning and Bybee’s 5E model (Note 1) to teach core STEM-C concepts to urban middle school students through restoration science. CCERS has five interrelated and complementary programmatic pillars (see details in the next section). The CCERS curriculum encourages urban middle school students to explore and participate in project-based learning activities restoring the oyster population in and around New York Harbor. In Melaville, Berg and Blank’s Community Based Learning (2001) there is a statement that says, “Education must connect subject matter with the places where students live and the issues that affect us all”. Lessons engage students and teachers in long-term restoration ecology and environmental monitoring projects with STEM professionals and citizen scientists. In brief, partners have created curriculums for both in-school and out-of-school learning programs, an online platform for educators and students to collaborate, and exhibits with community partners to reinforce and extend both the educators’ and their students’ learning. Currently CCERS implementation involves: • 78 middle schools • 127 teachers • 110 scientist volunteers • Over 5000 K-12 students In this report, we present summative findings from data collected via surveys among three cohorts of students whose teachers were trained by the project’s curriculum and findings from interviews among project leaders to answer the following research questions: 1. Do the five programmatic pillars function independently and collectively as a system of interrelated STEM-C content delivery vehicles that also effectively change students’ and educators’ disposition towards STEM-C learning and environmental restoration and stewardship? 2. What comprises the "curriculum plus community enterprise" local model? 3. What are the mechanisms for creating sustainability and scalability of the model locally during and beyond its five-year implementation? 4. What core aspects of the model are replicable? Findings suggest the program improved students’ knowledge in life sciences but did not have a significant effect on students’ intent to become a scientist or affinity for science. Published by Sciedu Press 1 ISSN 2380-9183 E-ISSN 2380-9205 http://irhe.sciedupress.com International Research in Higher Education Vol. 3, No. 4; 2018 Interviews with project staff indicated that the key factors in the model were its conservation mission, partnerships, and the local nature of the issues involved. The primary mechanisms for sustainability and scalability beyond the five-year implementation were the digital platform, the curriculum itself, and the dissemination (with over 450 articles related to the project published in the media and academic journals). The core replicable aspects identified were the digital platform and adoption in other Keystone species contexts.more » « less
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The Billion Oyster Project and Curriculum and Community Enterprise for the Restoration of New York Harbor (BOP-CCERS) program is a National Science Foundation (NSF) supported initiative and collaboration of multiple institutions and organizations led by Pace University and is in collaboration with New York City Public Schools. This large-scale project, Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST), generated a large amount of data through programming that engaged both teachers and students. This article presents the third part to the study with focus on the Digital Platform and results from the student Symposium presentations. Part 1 focused on Underrepresented Minority (URM) student interest in STEM as motivated by the original project. Part 2 focused on URM student engagement with teachers to support students in teaching science through experiential learning and lessons that connect science to the real world, particularly through science in the New York Harbor. Moreover, the second part of the study focused on teacher engagement in the program, and what the researchers had learned in the process. The third aspect of the study, and primary focus on this paper, had found additional positive results cited by the teachers in the study both using the Digital Platform and after the project outcomes from the student Symposium presentations.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5430/jct.v6n2p1
