Title: Best Practices in Chemistry Teacher Education
The University of Indianapolis Teach (STEM)3 (UIndy TS3) program is a clinical residency teacher preparation program in which candidates earn a Master of Arts in Teaching degree with licensure in Chemistry, Biology, or Math. UIndy TS3 consists of multiple layers of support, including a clinical residency with clinical mentor teachers and clinical faculty who also serve as university supervisors, integrated and scaffolded university coursework, which includes clinical seminars and classroom observations, and two years of in-service mentoring. Evaluation and retention results indicate that candidates are well-supported in their high-need classrooms by these program components, and our 3-year retention rate of 93% over eight cohorts is higher than the national average. Moreover, the clinical mentor teacher (CMT) is enriched by the candidate’s presence in the classroom, as the candidate imports new teaching methodologies (such as project-based learning) and technologies to the classroom that in turn inform the practice of the CMT. School administrators are also positively impacted by interacting with the candidates, both by keeping apprised of the challenges that new teachers face and by learning new ways to engage students. The efficacy of UIndy TS3 is proven by our 100% placement rate, long-term retention of program graduates, and their recognition as teacher leaders. more »« less
This paper theorizes teacher retention using the framework of job-embeddedness, and analyzes the case of a school district in New Jersey where science teachers have been retained at a much higher rate than most other school districts in the state during the focus period of the study (2007-2018). The research team interviewed 18 individuals in the district, including administrators, novice science teachers, mentor science teachers, retained science teachers, and the induction program coordinator. Other data collected included publicly available district documents, and documentation related to the mentoring and induction efforts provided by the district induction coordinator. The primary goal of the site visit was to better understand the factors that may have influenced teacher retention during the focus period of the data and to also investigate current practices around the mentoring and induction of new science teachers. Four factors were identified as salient to the high science teacher retention rate in the district: 1) collaborative and supportive colleagues in the science department, 2) the overall culture of the school, students, and community, 3) hiring and induction practices, and 4) ample resources for teaching and professional growth.
Rakes, Christopher R.; Stites, Michele L.; Ronau, Robert N.; Bush, Sarah B.; Fisher, Molly H.; Safi, Farshid; Desai, Siddhi; Schmidt, Ashley; Andreasen, Janet B.; Saderholm, Jon; et al(
, Education Sciences)
This paper examines how 17 secondary mathematics teacher candidates (TCs) in four university teacher preparation programs implemented technology in their classrooms to teach for conceptual understanding in online, hybrid, and face to face classes during COVID-19. Using the Professional Development: Research, Implementation, and Evaluation (PrimeD) framework, TCs, classroom mentor teachers, field experience supervisors, and university faculty formed a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to discuss a commonly agreed upon problem of practice and a change idea to implement in the classroom. Through Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, participants documented their improvement efforts and refinements to the change idea and then reported back to the NIC at the subsequent monthly meeting. The Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework (TPACK) and the TPACK levels rubric were used to examine how teacher candidates implemented technology for Mathematics conceptual understanding. The Mathematics Classroom Observation Protocol for Practices (MCOP2) was used to further examine how effective mathematics teaching practices (e.g., student engagement) were implemented by TCs. MCOP2 results indicated that TCs increased their use of effective mathematics teaching practices. However, growth in TPACK was not significant. A relationship between TPACK and MCOP2 was not evident, indicating a potential need for explicit focus on using technology for mathematics conceptual understanding.
The expansion of K-12 computer science (CS) has driven a dramatic need for educators who are trained in CS content and pedagogy [1]. This poster describes our effort to train teacher candidates (i.e., pre-service teachers who are students seeking degrees within a College of Education), who are specializing in secondary mathematics education, to be future CS educators. We specifically describe our collaboration to provide a blended preparatory six-week training for the ETS CS Praxis exam (5652), assisting our pre-service students in satisfying the CS certification requirements in our state before they graduate and begin their professional teaching career. Given the unique challenges of pre-service CS teacher preparation [2], blended models, which combine both in-person and online instruction, are an effective approach to building a pre-service program. Within our pre-service CS program, students first complete a two-course pathway that prepares them in AP CSP content and pedagogy experiences, including observations in local AP CSP classrooms [3]. After completing the two courses, our students participate in the blended version of the WeTeach_CS Praxis preparation course to achieve certification. The in-person support provided by the blended model contributed significantly to certification success in this project. With a cut-score of 149 for the Praxis exam, all 11 of our pre-service students who completed the course received a passing score (including one student with a perfect score of 200, and another student with a 195); the average score for our pre-service students was 175. An additional 11 in-service teachers, with diverse backgrounds in CS content knowledge, also participated in the blended Praxis preparation course, with an average score of 166. Given the unique challenges of pre-service CS teacher preparation, university pre-service CS teacher programs should look to innovative models of teacher support developed by in-service programs to make substantial gains in CS teacher certification. Incorporating an asynchronous online course that allows teachers with a wide range of prior experience in CS to learn at their own pace with in-person coursework and support appears to be a viable model for assisting non-CS major teacher candidates in achieving a CS certification. With the blended model, even teachers with no background knowledge in CS were successful. Within our pre-service CS program, students first complete a two-course pathway that prepares them in AP CSP content and pedagogy experiences, including observations in local AP CSP classrooms [3]. After completing the two courses, our students participate in the blended version of the WeTeach_CS Praxis preparation course to achieve certification. The in-person support provided by the blended model contributed significantly to certification success in this project. With a cut-score of 149 for the Praxis exam, all 11 of our pre-service students who completed the course received a passing score (including one student with a perfect score of 200, and another student with a 195); the average score for our pre-service students was 175. An additional 11 in-service teachers, with diverse backgrounds in CS content knowledge, also participated in the blended Praxis preparation course, with an average score of 166. Incorporating an asynchronous online course that allows teachers with a wide range of prior experience in CS to learn at their own pace with in-person coursework and support appears to be a viable model for assisting non-CS major teacher candidates in achieving a CS certification. With the blended model, even teachers with no background knowledge in CS were successful.
These data are for 17 secondary mathematics teacher candidates (TCs) in four university teacher preparation programs, who implemented technology in their classrooms to teach for conceptual understanding in online, hybrid, and face-to-face classes during COVID-19. Using the Professional Development: Research, Implementation, and Evaluation (PrimeD) framework, a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) was formed by teacher candidates, classroom mentor teachers, field experience supervisors, and university faculty to discuss a commonly agreed upon problem of practice and a change idea to implement in the classroom. Through Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, participants documented their improvement efforts and refinements to the change idea and then reported back to the NIC at the subsequent monthly meeting. The Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework (TPACK) and the TPACK levels rubric (Lyublinskaya & Tournaki, 2011) were used to examine how teacher candidates implemented technology for Mathematics conceptual understanding. The Mathematics Classroom Observation Protocol for Practices (MCOP^2; Gleason, Livers, & Zelkowski, 2015) was used to further examine how effective mathematics teaching practices (e.g., student engagement) were implemented by TCs.
This research paper describes a study of elementary teacher learning in an online graduate program in engineering education for in-service teachers. While the existing research on teachers in engineering focuses on their disciplinary understandings and beliefs (Hsu, Cardella, & Purzer, 2011; Martin, et al., 2015; Nadelson, et al., 2015; Van Haneghan, et al., 2015), there is increasing attention to teachers' pedagogy in engineering (Capobianco, Delisi, & Radloff, 2018). In our work, we study teachers' pedagogical sense-making and reflection, which, we argue, is critical for teaching engineering design.
This study takes place in [blinded] program, in which teachers take four graduate courses over fifteen months. The program was designed to help teachers not only learn engineering content, but also shift their thinking and practice to be more responsive to their students. Two courses focus on pedagogy, including what it means to learn engineering and instructional approaches to support this learning. These courses consist of four main elements, in which teachers:
1) Read data-rich engineering education articles to reflect on learning engineering; 2) Participate in online video clubs, looking at classroom videos of students’ engineering and commenting on what they notice; 3) Conduct interviews with learners about the mechanism of a pull-back car; and 4) Plan and teach engineering lessons, collecting and analyzing video from their classrooms.
In the context of this program, we ask: what stances do teachers take toward learning and teaching engineering design? What shifts do we observe in their stances?
We interviewed teachers at the start of the program and after each course. In addition to reflecting on their learning and teaching, teachers watched videos of students’ engineering and discussed what they saw as relevant for teaching engineering. We informally compared summaries from previous interviews to get a sense of changes in how participants talked about engineering, how they approached teaching engineering, and what they noticed in classroom videos. Through this process, we identified one teacher to focus on for this paper: Alma is a veteran 3rd-5th grade science teacher in a rural, racially-diverse public school in the southeastern region of the US. We then developed content logs of Alma's interviews and identified emergent themes. To refine these themes, we looked for confirming and disconfirming evidence in the interviews and in her coursework in the program. We coded each interview for these themes and developed analytic memos, highlighting where we saw variability and stability in her stances and comparing across interviews to describe shifts in Alma's reasoning. It was at this stage that we narrowed our focus to her stances toward the engineering design process (EDP).
In this paper, we describe and illustrate shifts we observed in Alma's reasoning, arguing that she exhibited dramatic shifts in her stances toward teaching and learning the EDP. At the start of the program, she was stable in treating the EDP as a series of linear steps that students and engineers progress through. After engaging and reflecting on her own engineering in the first course, she started to express a more fluid stance when talking more abstractly about the EDP but continued to take it up as a linear process in her classroom teaching. By the end of the program, Alma exhibited a growing stability across contexts in her stance toward the EDP as a fluid set of overlapping practices that students and engineers could engage in.
Stickney, K, Baker, K, and Sachs, D. Best Practices in Chemistry Teacher Education. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10140231. ACS symposium series 1335. Web. doi:10.1021/bk-2019-1335.ch003.
@article{osti_10140231,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Best Practices in Chemistry Teacher Education},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10140231},
DOI = {10.1021/bk-2019-1335.ch003},
abstractNote = {The University of Indianapolis Teach (STEM)3 (UIndy TS3) program is a clinical residency teacher preparation program in which candidates earn a Master of Arts in Teaching degree with licensure in Chemistry, Biology, or Math. UIndy TS3 consists of multiple layers of support, including a clinical residency with clinical mentor teachers and clinical faculty who also serve as university supervisors, integrated and scaffolded university coursework, which includes clinical seminars and classroom observations, and two years of in-service mentoring. Evaluation and retention results indicate that candidates are well-supported in their high-need classrooms by these program components, and our 3-year retention rate of 93% over eight cohorts is higher than the national average. Moreover, the clinical mentor teacher (CMT) is enriched by the candidate’s presence in the classroom, as the candidate imports new teaching methodologies (such as project-based learning) and technologies to the classroom that in turn inform the practice of the CMT. School administrators are also positively impacted by interacting with the candidates, both by keeping apprised of the challenges that new teachers face and by learning new ways to engage students. The efficacy of UIndy TS3 is proven by our 100% placement rate, long-term retention of program graduates, and their recognition as teacher leaders.},
journal = {ACS symposium series},
volume = {1335},
author = {Stickney, K and Baker, K and Sachs, D.},
}
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