Toward a National Endeavor to Marshal Postsecondary STEM Education Resources to Meet Global Challenges: A Planning Proposal

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Assessment/Research (91)This project is a set of two planning meetings and one workshop in pursuit of a more coherent, comprehensive, sustained, and integrated nationwide approach to the improvement of STEM education across all educational levels. It is based on an initial meeting of its four PIs with experts from the National Research Council in November 2006. That November meeting was focused on developing a new framework for improving STEM education, building on the knowledge and resources developed over the last two decades of intensive research and experiment. This project seeks to create a new infrastructure for STEM education to increase the capacity of our nation to create a STEM-educated citizenry and workforce to address unprecedented global challenges. This project begins with a meeting of those initially gathered in November 2006, proceeds to a second larger meeting (workshop) with critical advisors chosen to represent key perspectives and high-level expertise, and will conclude with a third meeting of the initial planning group to develop recommendations for a plan of action to carry the vision forward based on input from the critical advisors. This project is focused primarily on undergraduate STEM education, including its critical role in K-12 teacher recruitment and preparation. The project goals reflect both intellectual merit and broader impacts. The ultimate goals are:To enable postsecondary STEM innovators to work together in more coordinated and coherent ways within an effective national framework; To ensure that the design of STEM education is fully based on analyses and syntheses of appropriate research findings and accomplishments;To address barriers to institutional change more fully, so that postsecondary institutions can improve quality in STEM education; and To devise methods for launching systemic approaches to the professional development of current and future faculty built on research-grounded educational principles and practices.