The University of Cincinnati, in collaboration with Cincinnati Public Schools and the nonprofit community partner STRIVE as well as the GE Foundation and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, is developing a Noyce Teaching Fellows/Master Teaching Fellows (TF/MTF) project. During the planning process, the partnership is additionally including a local community college and an Historically Black College. A full Noyce TF/MTF proposal is being developed in which all of the higher education partners will collaborate to recruit STEM undergraduate majors and STEM professional career-changers to enroll in a Noyce Teaching Fellowship master's degree and licensure program at the University of Cincinnati. As part of the planning process, early recruitment efforts through the undergraduate STEM education pathway are being strengthened to include exploratory teaching experiences and career counseling. Mentoring and induction components of an existing Noyce Scholars program at the University of Cincinnati are being enhanced to include Practice-Based Learning and Improvement, which includes teaching apprenticeships modeled after Grand Rounds Conferences. The partners are planning a project in which Teaching Fellows would be placed in groups of three at schools, and their course work and clinical experiences would occur under the guidance of Master Teachers. The project team is assessing the needs of the Cincinnati Public Schools to determine current system characteristics, desired systems, and gaps, as part of the planning to develop a Master Teaching Fellow program that would best support current needs in the Cincinnati Public Schools. The collaborative partners are focused on forming a STEM education system from the perspective of pedagogy and community practice, with implications for policy and broader participation that would include the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana tri-state region and beyond. The evaluation component of the planning project is assessing progress in the planning as well as developing the evaluation plan for the full TF/MTF proposal.
This planning activity has led to the defining of a regional Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship program that will support a variety of science education efforts in the Cincinnati tri-state region. It would significantly impact regional collaboration among several partners (school districts, colleges and universities, education agencies, business and industry, informal science education providers such as museums, and community-based organizations). The Master Teacher Fellowship candidates with strong content background would be drawn from several counties in SW Ohio, northern Kentucky, and SE Indiana with the effort addressing problems in several high-needs school districts. The effort would primarily serve grades 7-12 and would also impact science teaching in the lower grades. The 20 Master Teaching Fellow teachers would receive leadership training over the five years of the project. During this time they would form a Networked Improvement Community to share and improve effective leadership practices for their roles. The development of a deeper understanding of the mechanisms and efficiencies of Networked Improvement Committees constitutes the intellectual merit of the project. The aim of this Community would be to constantly improve both their professional skills and also the classroom instructional practices of the teachers with whom they would interact and support. Their roles as leaders would range from supporting student teachers or new teachers for any local college and they would explicitly support Noyce new teacher candidates at Northern Kentucky University, Xavier University, and the University of Cincinnati. They would provide professional development workshops for inservice teachers. They also would provide support for science curriculum and program development. The teachers with whom the teacher leaders would work also would be formed into a regional Networked Improvement Community where teachers would share effective instructional practices and material. Parts of this larger community would also be supported as subject area teacher organizations for all of the STEM fields: physics, chemistry, Earth/space science, biology, engineering, math, and information technology teachers. The overall theme of the whole science education leadership effort would be to introduce authentic real-life contexts into science instruction to improve the learning of science and engineering content and practices along with STEM career exploration and the development of pathways to these careers through college programs. An annual regional STEM education conference would be supported. At the conferences teachers would present their successful instructional activities, colleges would show the wide range of STEM career pathways available, and business and industry would show opportunities for employment. The overall goal and broader impact for these activities would be to establish a STEM collaborate network of community partners all across the region that would be so robust and a part of the economic, political, and social fabric of the community that STEM education would be supported and constantly improved. As a result of the planning activity a strong proposal for financial support can be made to local funders and the National Science Foundation.
