The purpose of this five-year project is to develop, field test, revise, institutionalize, and disseminate a model research-based preservice program to prepare elementary teachers for enhanced science, mathematics, and technology teaching. A team of eight scientist and ten science educators will work in conjunction with 25 experienced elementary teachers and four principals to totally restructure the courses in content and pedagogy and the field experiences for preservice teachers in the preparatory program. One major goal of the work is to coordinate the set of experiences so that there is a consistency in the environment and epistomological underpinnings for the content and the methods courses and the classes in the schools where these students will have extensive field experiences. The students will take 27 semester hours of mathematics and science content. Eight hours of methods will be distributed so that the students will be engaged in thinking about teaching elementary school science and mathematics as it relates to the particular science or mathematics area being emphasized in the content courses. Each of the methods courses will have an accompanying field experience with teachers that are knowledgeable about what the students are studying at the university. The program will have students engaged in studying science and mathematics and working in schools over a three year time span. Another important aspect of the work is the careful attention that the P.I. and the project staff will pay to evaluating the impact of the intervention and its component parts on all of those involved--preservice teachers, experienced teachers, scientists, science educators, and, most importantly, the students of the new elementary teachers in their early years of teaching. The project recognizes that many new teachers leave teaching in the first one to three years. This project will provide support for the graduates during the first year in an attempt to network these new teachers in such a way that more of them will stay in teaching. Kansas State University will cost share in excess of 56% of the amount requested from NSF.
