This project addresses the Nation's growing need to recruit, prepare, and provide effective induction support for new STEM middle and high school teachers with degrees in STEM fields and strong content-specific pedagogical preparation. In particular the project will create an innovative pathway to teaching in Washington, DC for STEM professionals and STEM majors. This population represents an untapped supply of future teachers committed to teaching in high needs schools. Upon completion, the project will have validated a strategy to tap into this pool of STEM disciplinary experts, and will design and pilot a comprehensive set of learning experiences tailored to them. The project work will feature education and STEM faculty working with expert mathematics and science teachers in developing and piloting new methods to support teacher candidate development. Museum internships will be established and infused throughout the program, because museums are places in the urban landscape where teacher candidates can participate in authentic learning experiences and practice teaching a diverse population of students.
The long-term goal of this collaborative effort is to greatly enhance the DC area's ability to prepare "disciplinary experts" for urban mathematics and science teaching. There are three project outcomes. First, the project will discover how to increase the number of STEM professionals and undergraduate STEM majors preparing to teach in the DC area. Second, the project will institutionalize a sustainable nexus of collaboration among George Washington University's (GWU) education and STEM faculty, the District of Columbia Public and Public Charter Schools, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Academy for Science Education, and GWU's Center for Civic Engagement, to improve the mathematics and science teacher education pipeline in Washington, DC. Third, a robust program of study will be produced featuring redesigned teacher preparation coursework, integrated and innovative field experiences, and early career mentoring. A systematic analysis of pilot data collected from selected student work and video from courses and field placements will facilitate the development of new curriculum emphasizing methods that teach candidates to use their knowledge in mathematics and science, not just to judge student reasoning, but to recognize and use school age students' good thinking (i.e. good scientific and mathematical ideas) as building blocks for learning. Finally, the project is designed to respond to the need to extend the scope of teacher training beyond what is traditionally done within the boundary of a university-based teacher education program, and therefore will also produce a specialized induction and early career support strategy that will link candidates with mentors who will follow them in their early years of teaching in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
