The target population for this project is undergraduate students at Iowa State University pursuing a degree leading to a teaching license (K-6 or 7-12) with an emphasis in either mathematics or one of the sciences. As teachers, these students in the teacher preparation program will one-day teach as they have been taught. The problem to be addressed with this project is based on typical college students' experiences in their study of mathematics and science content. Typically, these courses are delivered in large-lecture courses, designed to meet the needs of any liberal arts student, and without appropriate application opportunities to the teacher education discipline (K-12 classrooms). The objectives of this project include (1) providing courses delivered with appropriate teaching strategies (2) developing new undergraduate courses in engineering, entomology, and botany with a focus on school classrooms (3) modifying existing education courses to reflect the students' experiences in these new courses and (4) establishing learning communities of undergraduate students to provide both an academic and a social support system. Other goals supporting these objectives include (5) developing meaningful faculty collaborations across departments and colleges, (6) supporting master teachers from K-12 classrooms in which the collegiate learning can be applied, (7) assigning a different faculty mentor from a K-12 classroom and the university campus to each of the learning communities in an effort to provide guidance and support to the undergraduate students and (8) developing graduate courses to provide continuing education of Iowa's teachers. The practicing teachers, who choose to be mentors, collaborate with the ISU faculty member to guide the undergraduate students through their practicum experience. Groups of three to four undergraduate students complete all pre-student teaching experiences with several of the teachers at the school associated with their school mentor.
