New Perspectives in Science Education
Teacher Professional Development to Support STEM Equity
Janelle Johnson, Metropolitan State University of Denver (United States)
Abstract
Through a four-year National Science Foundation-funded research project at our university, we created a STEM-based professional development program for preservice and inservice teachers. Participants engaged in GLOBE environmental science-based learning to take back to their classrooms. Day-long workshop topics included weather and temperature; the science of seasons; water filters and bioremediation that included an engineering component; watersheds, erosion and dams; chemistry; water quality and macroinvertebrates; water quality after a mine spill; earth as a system; electrical circuits; weather stations; math with weather and climate data; and mosquito mapping. We also held summer institutes for teachers that included Water in the Southwestern US, and a deeper dive into the same theme centered on dissolved oxygen protocols. Each workshop and summer institute were captured in a co-created padlet that is publicly available. The research-based model of professional development we developed is a train the trainer model. Workshop facilitators serve as participant observers by intentionally interacting with small groups of teachers to learn what challenges they are facing with the workshop content as well as the challenges they anticipate facing with implementation in their own classrooms. The whole team of facilitators debriefs daily to share what they have learned from the teachers, and then reflect on how those understandings will shape professional development they offer in the future. Another aspect of professional development that supports STEM equity is the use of “focal students” for teacher reflection. While it is normal for teachers to plan for the “typical” or “average” student, we ask teachers to think of specific students of theirs who have been less engaged with science—they may think of students with special needs, who are shy, have some gaps in their educational foundation, second language learners, etc. At the end of each segment of the workshop, the facilitator asks the teachers to reflect on how that activity would go with the teacher’s focal students, and if any differentiation would be required. Teachers are often enthusiastic when they realize the hands-on nature of the environmental science activities would be effective at serving the needs of their focal students; this is important in terms of equity since these are the very same students with the least access to high quality STEM learning opportunities.
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Keywords |
STEM equity; professional development; environmental education; inquiry-based learning |
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