This award provides funding for a three year standard award to support a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering Site program at the University of Southern California (USC), entitled, "Societally Relevant Engineering Technologies-Research Experiences for Teachers (SRET-RET)", under the direction of Dr. Maja J. Mataric.
The vision of this RET in Engineering Program is to leverage the considerable resources of the USC to create long-term partnerships among world-renowned engineering researchers and K-12 teachers in Los Angeles inner-city schools. The six week SRET-RET summer program will bring knowledge of science, technology and engineering directly to middle and high school educators (10 teachers/year for 3 years) by involving them in mentored, discovery-based authentic learning and research experiences in state of the art engineering research facilities including the NSF Engineering Research Center for Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems (BMES). In addition to immersion in the research environment SRET-RET teachers will participate in engineering, technology, ethics, and pedagogy professional development workshops which will facilitate the synthesis and translation of their newly gained knowledge and skills into meaningful and rigorous K-12 classroom activities that sprark enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering and math, using Stigler's lesson study approach to processional development. The academic year follow-up component of the SRET-RET program is structured to sustain and elaborate on the accomplishments the teachers make during the summer and facilitate communication between the teachers and their K-12 colleagues as well as their university partners. The SRET-RET teachers will be role models and conduits of science, technology, and engineering, bridging the traditional gaps between university centers of research and 6-12th grade classrooms.
USC Research Experience for Teachers Outcome Report 2014 Program Overview and Intellectual Merit The USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Societally Relevant Engineering Technologies Research Experience for Teachers (SRET RET) program is part of the Viterbi School of Engineering’s Viterbi Adopt-a-School, Adopt-a-Teacher program (VAST), a School-wide initiative at USC in which engineering faculty collaborate with K-12 teachers and their students. It is funded by the National Science Foundation. The SRET RET program is a comprehensive teacher professional development program in which middle and high school teachers participate in an intensive summer research experience in Viterbi engineering labs, build K-12 curricula based on the laboratory research content that they learn in the labs, and implement the new curricula in their classrooms. The program has the combined intent of bringing contemporary, innovative engineering research to middle and high school students (in other words bring labs to class) and improving student achievement through scientific inquiry. The SRET RET program design and associated activities included a five-week summer intensive experience in which four days per week middle and high school teachers fully participated in engineering laboratory research and then one day per week teachers engaged in an inquiry focused content-to-pedagogy teacher professional development workshop, building curriculum from their lab research experience with foci on scientific experimentation and improving students’ science achievement and literacy. Program Outcomes and Broad Impact Results and outcomes from the SRET RET program indicate the following: Both the RET teacher participants and their students had significant gains resulting from the program. Using four years of teaching efficacy data (a composite) and comparing to a national and state data set as comparative data, the research team compared the science teaching efficacy of the SRET RET participants to other national studies and determined that the RET teacher participants had significantly higher science teaching efficacy from that of the national average (per other published studies) and significant gains during the academic year that they participated in the program. Additionally in terms of instructional performance, the participating RET teachers had greater gains via structured observation than the statewide average for teachers in science in middle and high school. In terms of student gains associated with having a teacher as a RET participant, using a pre-post comparison, the RET participating teachers’ middle and high school students had significant gains in science literacy, interest and engagement in science and science content knowledge specific to the engineering that they were taught.
