In this project the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) is continuing to catalyze and sustain pedagogical and curricular transformation on a large scale through its Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) Program. It is building on prior results and accomplishments in empowering educators to help students in American colleges employ focused and connected learning in the science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (STEM) disciplines to engage with important issues facing our democracy. A key goal of this project is to expand SENCER's community of practice to achieve a transformative "tipping point" in undergraduate STEM instruction and learning.
SENCER models apply an "outside - in" approach from the science of learning to the learning of science, framing STEM learning within compelling civic challenges. The intellectual merit of this effort consists in empowering educators to help students in American colleges employ focused learning in the STEM disciplines to engage with great issues facing our democracy. The broader impacts of this project include strengthening our democracy by enhancing the scientific and technological literacy of the American people supporting civic engagement, and sustaining a program that helps achieve these important goals.
Five goals define the reach of this 4-year project:
1. Expand participation in the SENCER Program to reach transformative scale by involving faculty teams from more than 20% of US colleges and universities in national and regional programs in new course and program design, active learning pedagogies, and civic engagement. 2. Increase the intensity and scope of follow-up activities to institutionalize reforms by organizing intensive implementation webinars, linked-in discussion groups, and deploying leadership fellow "co-mentors" to strengthen implementation outcomes. 3. Disseminate scholarship, materials, and other resources to strengthen connections with the wider education community by mounting a "models to materials" initiative to populate the SENCER digital library collection with easy-to-adapt and use collections of course materials, labs, assessments, civic engagement projects, and related resources. 4. Broaden assessment to measure and promote enduring understandings by collaborating with the College Board to enable targeted assessment (connected to the disciplines in which SENCER courses are taught) that measures learning of unifying scientific concepts, science practices, and issues involving science, technology and society. 5. Engage in formal planning to assure sustainability, leadership succession, and growth by designing and implementing a multi-phased sustainability plan. The plan includes strategies and mechanisms for program development, finance, governance, leadership succession, and acquisition of intramural and extramural support to grow a robust community of reformers well after NSF funding has ceased.
