Jennifer Ellis
$1,187,961
Elizabeth A Allan
Liz Lane-Harvard
Mike Nelson
University of Central Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Education and Human Resources (EHR)
This Noyce Track 3 project, Master Teachers Conducting STEM Practices and Action Research, at the University of Central Oklahoma aims to serve the national need of 1) retaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educators and 2) developing leaders who can support others who have nontraditional certifications. This project includes partnerships with Oklahoma City Public Schools and the Central Oklahoma STEM Alliance. Project goals include training 14 high school biology and mathematics teachers, Master Teacher Fellows, in Central Oklahoma, over six years. The goal of the Masters’ level training is to solidify teachers’ understanding of STEM practices by engaging them in authentic research, including bringing research into practice in their educational settings (educational action research). Central to this project is engaging teachers in leadership training while exploring a problem of practice related to equity and achievement gaps exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This work not only contributes to addressing the need for highly effective biology and mathematics teacher leaders in secondary education in Oklahoma, it also addresses student achievement. Results from this project are positioned to increase the available curriculum aligned with state and national standards and help quantify how retention and students’ attitudes toward science and mathematics are affected by these changes. Mentored by faculty from the University of Central Oklahoma, the Master Teacher Fellows (MTFs) are expected to design a research project, collect and interpret data, and communicate their findings to their professional community. In addition, the project aims to have MTFs develop STEM curricular projects aligned to state and national standards utilizing a three-dimensional learning approach: scientific practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. Implementing the curricular projects in classrooms, evaluating the effect of using the three-dimensional curricula on student attitudes towards science and mathematics, and retention of content are major objectives of this project. Leadership training, hosted by the Central Oklahoma STEM Alliance, connects these practicing teachers to industry mentors. This training provides a framework to generate solutions to inequities in STEM learning experienced by students in schools with varying resources. Training during the M.S. degree program and ongoing professional development prepares these teachers to effectively support and mentor other teachers, especially those with emergency and alternative certification. The project plans to foster increased fluency in curriculum-based leadership, which can translate into courage in adapting curricula to a variety of modalities. This Track 3: Master Teaching Fellowships project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Track 3 Noyce program supports exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.