Opportunities to Learn: Creative Science Through Inquiry, a Middle Grades Teaming Framework

该项目将推动学生和教师创新技术体验(ITEST)计划的努力，以更好地了解和促进实践，通过为学生开发通过探究在科学中创造性学习的机会，提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学(STEM)领域追求职业生涯的动机和能力。该项目将培养72名中学教师，与大约1800名来自经济困难学校的学生合作，这些学生几乎没有机会参与到技术丰富的探究式学习环境中。它将通过跨越数学、科学、技术和英语/语言艺术的课程模式来检验一整套连贯的经验，以便STEM在整个学年以有意义的、相关的方式协作地注入到课程中。使用团队设计，该项目将吸引大学和社区学院的教职员工以及中学教师的行业合作伙伴。通过这一努力，教育工作者和专家团队将开发、测试、提炼STEM原则，并将其注入常规课堂活动中，使学生能够通过技术和技术写作增强的数学和科学体验STEM的相互联系。该项目将有助于满足各国增加进入高中的学生的多样性的需要，这些学生更好地准备好进行可能导致未来STEM职业生涯的课程选择。该项目将使用混合方法设计，通过问卷调查、焦点小组、观察、访谈、录像带和事后测试来收集数据。学生在科学成就和对STEM职业的倾向方面的增长将使用准实验设计进行分析。倾向得分匹配过程将被用来等同于分组和亚组倾向得分匹配分析，以检查性别、种族和社会经济地位的治疗效果。将使用重复的措施，通过探究和定性的方法，检查教师在教授科学方面的自我效能感的增加，以确定在为学生实施协作、跨学科体验方面的成功和挑战。该项目将提供一个模式框架，指导教师创建和实施合作的STEM课程单元，使行业/社区学院/STEM专业人员参与规划、教学和评估过程。通过该框架开发的学生体验将使学生接触到令人兴奋的、相关的STEM课程，这些课程展示了他们的学术课程的相互关联性。制定的模式将加强教师团队，同时建立教师的自我效能感，以跨学科教授STEM课程。传播工作有两个方面：反馈和社区分享。关于这一模式的反馈将通过来自STEM学科的专业人员的学术演讲来收集。项目网站还将提供对框架和样本活动的访问，以及对模式作出反应的机会。

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by developing opportunities for students to learn creatively in science through inquiry. The project will prepare 72 middle school teachers to work with approximately 1800 students from economically disadvantaged schools who have had few opportunities to participate in technology-rich, inquiry-based learning environments. It will examine coherent sets of experiences through curricular models across mathematics, science, technology and English/language arts so that STEM is collaboratively infused in meaningful, relevant ways into the curriculum throughout the school year. Using a team design, the project will engage university and community college faculty members and industry partners with middle school teachers. Through this effort, teams of educators and experts will develop, test, refine, and infuse STEM principles into regular classroom activities so that students can experience the interconnectedness of STEM through mathematics and science enhanced by technology and technical writing. This project will help address the nations' need to increase the diversity of students entering high school who are better prepared to make course selections that will potentially lead to future STEM careers. The project will use a mixed methods design to capture data through questionnaires, focus groups, observations, interviews, videotapes and pre-post tests. Student increases in science achievement and dispositions towards STEM careers will be analyzed using a quasi-experimental design. A propensity score matching process will be used to equate group with sub-group propensity score matching analysis to examine treatment effects by gender, ethnicity, and SES. Repeated measures will be used to examine increases in teacher self-efficacy for teaching science through inquiry and qualitative methods to identify successes and challenges to implementing the collaborative, cross-disciplinary experiences for students. This project will provide a model framework to guide teachers into creating and implementing collaborative STEM lesson units that will engage industry/community college/STEM professionals in the planning, teaching, and evaluating process. Student experiences developed through the framework will expose students to exciting, relevant STEM curriculum that demonstrates the interconnectedness of their academic courses. The enacted model will enhance the teacher teams while building the self-efficacy of the teachers to deliver STEM lessons across the disciplines. Dissemination efforts are two-fold: feedback and community sharing. Feedback on this model will be garnered through academic presentations from professionals across the STEM disciplines. The project website will also provide access to the framework and sample activities as well as opportunities to react to the model.