Supporting Rural STEM Middle School Teachers and Career Counselors in the Development of Effective STEM Content and Career Development Experiences

支持农村 STEM 中学教师和职业顾问开发有效的 STEM 内容和职业发展经验

• 批准号: 2300747
• 负责人: Dodie Limberg
• 金额: $ 281.77万
• 依托单位: University of South Carolina at Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-01 至 2027-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2300747&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Supporting; Rural; STEM; Middle; Teachers

Rural youth, in particular, have limited opportunities to gain exposure, develop interests, and broaden participation in the STEM workforce. While school counselors may have extensive training in career development, STEM teachers face many challenges effectively infusing career development into their instruction. This project will provide rural STEM middle school teachers and career counselors professional development and the support needed to collaborate with each other and local community assets in designing, integrating, and implementing effective STEM content and career development activities. Local teams will co-develop project-based learning units that incorporate a place-based education perspective involving STEM assets, careers, and stakeholders from the local communities for middle school rural youth that intentionally infuse STEM careers in their area with STEM content. Research aims of the study seek to explore the sense of job satisfaction, isolation, and impact to STEM practice experienced by rural teachers and counselors as a result of their collaboration in this professional development model as well as student STEM-relevant motivation, self-efficacy, and learning after participating in the units. This project will examine the feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness of a collaborative teacher development model on both teacher and career counselor career development, as well as student outcomes. Sixty middle school teachers and 30 school counselors from 16 rural schools that serve over 6,000 students will participate in an intensive, multi-faceted, professional development experience involving collaboration and curricular development. Researchers will use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to examine the impact of their collaboration experiences on teacher and career counselor professional development and practice. Student outcomes will include teacher assessments of students' deeper learning (i.e., creativity, innovation, critical thinking), the impact of collaboration, and students' self-reports of their STEM motivation, STEM career interests, and self-efficacy. In addition to impacts on middle school student interest in STEM careers, the formal evaluation of the core model will allow the research team to develop information on promising processes for inclusive design. Examples of the learning experiences deemed to be of high impact in the contexts in which the projects are to be carried out, enabling others to successfully implement place-based career infused authentic STEM problem-based learning across diverse contexts. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

尤其是农村青年，获得接触，发展利益并扩大对STEM劳动力的参与机会有限。尽管学校辅导员可能在职业发展方面接受了广泛的培训，但STEM教师面临许多挑战，可以有效地将职业发展注入他们的指导中。该项目将为农村STEM中学教师和职业辅导员提供专业发展，并为彼此和当地社区资产进行合作所需的支持，以设计，整合和实施有效的STEM内容和职业发展活动。本地团队将共同开发基于项目的学习部门，其中包含一个基于地方的教育观点，该观点涉及来自当地社区的STEM资产，职业和中学乡村青年的利益相关者，该社区故意在其所在地区注入STEM含量的STEM职业。该研究的研究目的旨在探索农村教师和辅导员对STEM实践的工作满意度，孤立和影响的感觉，这是由于他们在这种专业发展模型中的合作以及与学生相关的动力，自我效能感和参与单位后的学习。该项目将研究有关教师和职业顾问职业发展的协作教师发展模式以及学生成果的可行性，可接受性和适当性。来自16所农村学校的60名中学教师和30名学校辅导员为6,000多名学生提供服务，将参加涉及协作和课程发展的密集，多方面的专业发展经验。研究人员将使用调查，访谈和焦点小组来研究其协作经验对教师和职业顾问专业发展和实践的影响。学生的成绩将包括对学生更深入学习（即创造力，创新，批判性思维）的教师评估，协作的影响以及学生对他们的STEM动机，STEM职业兴趣和自我效能的自我报告。除了对中学学生对STEM职业的兴趣的影响外，对核心模型的正式评估还将使研究团队能够开发有关包容性设计的有前途过程的信息。在要进行项目的环境中，被认为具有很大影响的学习经历的例子，使他人能够成功实施基于位置的职业融合了基于地位的真实STEM问题，基于各种环境的学习。 Discovery Research Prek-12计划（DRK-12）试图通过研究和开发创新资源，模型和工具来显着增强PreK-12学生和教师的科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。 DRK-12计划中的项目基于STEM教育和先前的研发工作的基础研究，为拟议项目提供了理论和经验的理由。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的审查标准通过评估来进行评估的。