Computation New, GK-12 SUNRISE: Schools, University, and Resources in the Sciences and Engineering
SUNRISE is a new GK-12 project partnering STEM graduate students from George Mason University with teachers in grades 4-6 from three different school divisions in the state of Virginia. The objective of the project is to build a unique model of collaboration among teachers, school administrators, and the participating university to foster systemic efforts in implementing information technology rich content-knowledge into K-12 education. This is supported through science topics from contemporary areas such as GPS, nanotechnology, and oceanography and is brought into the classroom through lessons with hands-on experiments.
The intellectual merit of this project is that creative information technology theme provides participants with a multi-level learning experience that advances knowledge of science topics and fosters professional development. This is achieved by constructing a framework that provides training and exchange of intellectual ideas, and integrates scientific research from diverse disciplines. It provides participants with an opportunity to discover, widen, and deepen knowledge within their own field as well as a mechanism to deliver that knowledge through the GK-12 graduate fellows.
The broader impacts of the project include professional development opportunities for Fellows that strengthen their instructional and communication skills. The project offers the potential for sustained growth in quality and quantity of the nation's scientific workforce. The integration of research and education as well as the building of capacity of all the stakeholders offers many excellent possibilities and institutional culture change that transforms K-12 and graduate education. The project also supports the encouragement of diverse populations in the sciences through a focus on fellows and K-12 students from underrepresented populations.
2007-2014) is a unique graduate Fellowship program at George Mason University (GMU) funded by the National Science Foundation that targets graduate students working in the grade 4-6 school environment. SUNRISE is a new GK-12 project aimed at partnering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) graduate students (Fellows) with school teachers from three different school divisions in Northern Virginia. The conceptual focus of the SUNRISE project is to improve learning outcomes for elementary and middle school students in STEM subjects as identified and driven by the science needs at the schools in the participating school divisions. The objective of this project is to build a unique model of collaboration among elementary and middle schools, school division administration, and GMU to foster systemic efforts in implementing Information Technology (IT) rich STEM content-knowledge into grades 4-6 education by graduate Fellows, with the potential to enhance the delivery of science instruction and provide long term professional development for teachers. The project highlights include preparing the Fellows (graduate students) to understand their research deeply, training them in pedagogical skills, communicating their research to the K-12 students and the public, improving science content knowledge of teachers and more importantly, creating a sense of social responsibility among its participants who are expected to be an advocate of GK-12 type activities throughout their careers. Specifically, the primary activities of the fellows were to: (a) Enrich existing curriculum with additional hands on experiments to reinforce the science behind the experiments (b) Lead the post-experiment discussion of the science behind the experiment, an activity that is often ignored due to lack of time or the lack of content knowledge by the teachers. (c) Explain the science behind the experiments by relating to real world examples. (d) Bring their research and advanced Information technology (IT) rich STEM topics into their classroom in the form of lessons. Other notable achievements include publications in conference proceedings, summer camps, and the international trip to India for the graduate students, which took place in January 2012. The evidence from the final fellow surveys and evidence from previous surveys discussed in the evaluator’s reports for years 1-6 strongly indicate that almost all the past fellows have experienced strong personal and professional growth as a result of participating in the Sunrise program. The fellows report that their experiences working on teams with teachers and in the K-12 schools has had an important impact on fellow professional and personal growth. Fellows particularly stressed the growth in their ability and confidence in presenting science topics to both non-scientists and to their colleagues and growth in teaching at all levels. It is clear from the responses of the majority of teachers over its six year life, as shown in the teachers’ surveys, interviews and school site visit notes reported in the annual reports, that the teachers have been very pleased with the operation of the project, its goals and the response of their fellows to the challenges of working in a team with their teachers. Most of the teachers report a very strong positive impact on their professional growth. Teachers have also reported a strong mentoring impact by the fellows for their students. They also said they appreciated the introduction of numerous fellow created or adapted hands-on inquiry-based lessons developed for their students. The teachers also have been pleased with the introduction of up to date science information and information on fellow research that was presented by the fellows to their students. The majority of the project teachers have said over the six years that the project has been a great success in their schools and classrooms and that they would like to see more Univeristy-K12 STEM outreach projects that involve long term, weekly fellow visits to the classrooms. The participating teachers have reported that the project has had a positive impact on their students with growth in student’s positive attitudes toward STEM and STEM careers. The teachers have particularly mentioned the positive impact on their students of the mentoring and modeling relationship of the fellows with the students including encouragement for girls to pursue STEM careers. The reports of the teachers have been borne out in interviews with school administrators as well as in evaluator visits to the classrooms over the seven year life of the project. Fellows who went on the trip to India report in interviews and several surveys that the trip had major impact on their personal and professional growth. A number of those who went on the trip said that the trip was the most important experience during their time as a GK-12 fellow.
