9353453 Bowyer This project (Leadership Institute for Teaching Elementary Science or LITES) targets all 1050 elementary teachers located in the 60 schools of the Oakland, California District. A broad-based coalition of college, industry, and science center scientists; and college, school, community, and family educators will be involved with the LITES effort. Leader Teachers (180) will participate in a research-based LITES curriculum for 5 weeks each year for two years. They will in turn train a school-site cluster of five same- grave-level colleague teachers. Key features of the LITES curriculum will be: (1) a linkage of four informal science centers to teach a 4-day thematic science course on ecosystems in environments that teachers can use year round as living laboratories for their own learning and classroom teaching; (2) a technology course taught in an industry setting where teachers can learn first-hand the complex concepts in this often misunderstood discipline, and (3) an integration of pedagogy and science subject matter courses combined with practical classroom experience. The Leader Teachers will be assisted in their task by a team of 29 LITES staff who will provide school-site support. Seventy-two teachers who have participated in a pilot of the LITES program will serve as consultants to the Leader Teacher/Colleague Teacher clusters. This proposal is appropriate for teacher enhancement because it is a well-developed systematic project designed to enhance the science knowledge and teaching, and develop leadership skills of lead elementary school teachers of a large, multiethnic (mostly African American and Hispanic) student population. Non-NSF cost-sharing is approximately 70% of the amount requested from NSF. ***
