The University of Oklahoma's K20 Center is a leader in school-wide reform. For over ten years, using primarily private foundation grants, K20 Center has promoted the 10 IDEALS of High Achieving Schools by working first with school administrators and then whole schools from across the state. The National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century established the need of an on-going system to improve student knowledge and interest for scientific and technological advances with the following goals and actions: summer institutes, inquiry groups, leadership training, and Internet portals. Through its early, and continuing programs, K20 Center improved school leadership and technology integration in school systems. In recent years the K20 Center added more direct classroom interventions and content- and inquiry-based professional development to its programs. With this proposal, the K20 Center seeks to expand current programs and empirically test the K20 SCIENCE Professional Development Model addressing teacher quality and student success in small, isolated rural schools with high Native American population. The K20 SCIENCE Model supports the National Commission's goals by improving science teacher knowledge through authentic research experiences, lesson study, and professional learning communities (PLC) with networking, Internet portals, and technological support for extensive professional development of rural science teachers. After field-testing, comprehensive evaluation, and commensurate revisions, the K20 SCIENCE model will be shared regionally, nationally and internationally through professional meetings and publications, including through the National Rural Education Association to assist replication in other rural contexts.
Intellectual Merit: This project will use quantitative measures to document changes in teacher content knowledge, classroom practices, efficacy of teaching, PLC development, peer coaching and mentoring, teacher quality and student success following teacher participation in a Summer Research Institute and subsequent professional development support interventions. Each separate piece of the model is based on research showing positive impact on learning in theory or in practice; yet no piece can stand alone to provide comprehensive reform of science education. The K20 SCIENCE model brings teacher content knowledge and inquiry experience, transfer to classroom practice, and support for professional innovation and interactive instruction into a single, testable program .
Broader Impacts: The K20 Center network of 500 rural schools provides an extensive infrastructure from which to design, implement, test, revise, and share results of rural education innovation. Oklahoma's schools serve a diverse K-12 student population that has more than three times the poverty rate of the national average . Nearly 25% of Oklahoma students drop out of high school between 9th and 12th grade, and too many Oklahoma high school students fail to learn higher levels of science that lead to college graduation and scientific and technical careers. Particularly disadvantaged are Native Americans. K20 SCIENCE will directly impact low-income, rural schools serving diverse populations.
