Rural Reimagining of Opportunities for Undergraduate Teacher Education in STEM: A Capacity Building Project

农村对 STEM 本科教师教育机会的重新构想：能力建设项目

• 批准号: 2344922
• 负责人: Ezekiel Kimball
• 金额: $ 9.97万
• 依托单位: University of Maine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-07-01 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2344922&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Rural; Reimagining; Opportunities; Undergraduate; Teacher

The project aims to serve the national need of recruiting, educating, and retaining highly-effective STEM teachers in high-need rural districts. Recognizing the significant shortages in both the STEM and rural teaching workforces, the project aims to ensure the availability of a robust rural STEM teaching workforce through continuous innovation. STEM teaching workforce shortages arise from the low numbers of enrollments in initial licensure programs in mathematics, physical science, and life science licensure areas compounded by strong employment prospects and comparatively high initial salaries for STEM graduates in most fields. Rural districts also face additional hurdles in hiring highly-qualified STEM teachers due to limited local populations, constrained budgets, and difficulties in recruiting experienced teachers. The project seeks to counter these shortages by supporting the recruitment, education, and retention of promising rural STEM teacher candidates. Specifically, the project will explore the circumstances under which rural STEM students would pursue teacher licensure and when those initially seeking licensure in non-STEM areas would switch to a STEM pathway. With this understanding, new licensure pathways will be designed to attract and retain highly qualified rural STEM teachers.This project at the University of Maine includes partnerships with rural school districts and communities. Key objectives include: 1) developing a survey to examine undergraduate motivations for choosing STEM or teacher education; 2) organizing design thinking workshops with partners to create rural-focused licensure pathways; and 3) conducting market research with rural STEM and teacher education majors to determine the best strategies for licensure of rural STEM teacher candidates. The project builds on University of Maine research demonstrating that non-rural teacher education majors rarely consider rural communities for future careers. This finding means that rural STEM students represent the best possible source of future rural STEM teachers. This project has the potential to develop scalable, replicable pathways to move more rural students into STEM licensure pathways. This Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.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.

该项目旨在满足国家在高需求农村地区招聘、教育和留住高效 STEM 教师的需求。该项目认识到 STEM 和农村教师队伍的严重短缺，旨在通过持续创新确保农村拥有一支强大的 STEM 教师队伍。 STEM 教学劳动力短缺的原因是数学、物理科学和生命科学许可领域初始许可项目的入学人数较少，加上大多数领域 STEM 毕业生的就业前景良好且初始工资相对较高。由于当地人口有限、预算有限以及招聘经验丰富的教师困难，农村地区在聘用高素质 STEM 教师方面还面临额外障碍。该项目旨在通过支持招聘、教育和保留有前途的农村 STEM 教师候选人来解决这些短缺问题。具体来说，该项目将探讨农村 STEM 学生在什么情况下寻求教师执照，以及那些最初在非 STEM 领域寻求教师执照的学生何时会转向 STEM 途径。有了这种认识，我们将设计新的许可途径，以吸引和留住高素质的农村 STEM 教师。缅因大学的这个项目包括与农村学区和社区的合作伙伴关系。主要目标包括：1) 开展一项调查，考察本科生选择 STEM 或教师教育的动机； 2) 与合作伙伴组织设计思维研讨会，创建以农村为重点的许可途径； 3) 对农村 STEM 和教师教育专业进行市场研究，以确定农村 STEM 教师候选人获得执照的最佳策略。该项目以缅因大学的研究为基础，该研究表明非农村教师教育专业的学生很少考虑农村社区的未来职业。这一发现意味着农村 STEM 学生是未来农村 STEM 教师的最佳来源。该项目有潜力开发可扩展、可复制的途径，让更多农村学生进入 STEM 许可途径。该能力建设项目得到罗伯特·诺伊斯教师奖学金计划（Noyce）的支持。诺伊斯计划支持有才华的 STEM 本科专业和专业人士成为高效的 K-12 STEM 教师，并支持经验丰富、堪称典范的 K-12 教师成为高需求学区的 STEM 大师级教师。它还支持对高需求学区 K-12 STEM 教师的有效性和保留率的研究。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。