EAGER: Exploring the Influence of an Asset-Focused Intervention on Students' Interest, Motivation, and Sense of Belonging in the Life Sciences

这项干预将探索技术增强的专业发展是否将为三年级和五年级的科学教师提供所需的知识和技能，以准备和激励学生变得更感兴趣和更有动力在STEM领域追求职业生涯。专业发展将为教师提供教学策略，促进学生的关系问题和归属感，有助于留住学生在STEM渠道。该项目将面向来自华盛顿特区三所高需求学校的低收入非裔美国学生，通过参与生命科学课程，最终目标是提高学生对STEM的认识和兴趣。这一干预措施将提供持续的专业发展，以促进教师使用以资产为重点的教学策略，这些策略考虑到学生的文化实践、价值观和儿童家庭或社区环境中明显的生活经历。专业发展将通过面对面的暑期和学年专业发展学院和托尔什人才技术在线平台提供。这两条途径都包括对教学和学生学习实践的持续审查，培训者和教师之间的即时反馈，教师有更多机会查看和反思他们的技能，以及参与学校之间虚拟生命科学公共交流的空间。探索研究K-12计划(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高K-12学前班学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学方面的学习和教学。DRK-12计划的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和实证证明。混合方法研究设计将用于收集焦点小组和调查数据，以及进行课堂观察，以确定学生的关系重要性、归属感和参与度等前景变量是否相互关联。研究文献表明，学生对学习过程的投入是最终学业成绩的重要预测因素。预计学生的社会情感知觉不仅应该与彼此正相关，而且还应该与学生的参与度呈正相关；因此，有助于确认这种社会情感考虑的学术相关性。在教师参与专业发展干预的情况下，将修改学生社会情绪感知工具，以评估学生的认知变化。对高中阶段的小学非裔美国学生的这些社会情感因素的研究，有可能促进对大部分未被探索的概念方向的了解，这些方向需要系统的实证审查。人才探索模式以人的能力框架为基础，体现在教师如何在日常课堂上激发和使用学生关于课程、学习活动和生命科学主题的资产。因此，一个主要成果将是修改一种适合发展的测量工具，以衡量初级学生对其早期开发和试点阶段以外的生命科学课程中关系问题和归属感的看法。

This intervention will explore whether technology enhanced professional development will provide third and fifth grade science teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to prepare and inspire students to become more interested and motivated to pursue careers in STEM fields. The professional development will provide teachers with instructional strategies that promote students' relational mattering and sense of belonging that will help retain students in the STEM pipeline. The project will target low-income African-American students from three high need schools in Washington, DC, through engagement in life science lessons with the ultimate goal of increasing students' awareness and interest in STEM. This intervention will offer continuous professional development to promote teachers' use of asset-focused instructional strategies that take into account students' cultural practices, values, and lived experiences evident in the children's home or community environments. Professional development will be offered through face-to-face summer and academic year professional development academies and the Torsh TALENT technology online platform. Both pathways feature ongoing review of instructional and student learning practices, immediate feedback between trainers and teachers, more opportunities for teachers to view and reflect on their craft, and space for virtual life science communal exchange across participating schools. The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics 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.A mixed methods research design will be used to collect focus group and survey data, as well as conduct classroom observations, to determine if the foreground variables of students' relational mattering, sense of belonging, and engagement are interrelated. Research literature has shown that students' engagement in the learning process is an important predictor of ultimate academic performance outcomes. It is anticipated that the students' socioemotional perceptions should positively relate not only to each other but to student engagement levels as well; hence helping to confirm the academic relevance of such socioemotional considerations. The Student Socioemotional Perception Tool will be modified to assess students' perception changes given their teachers' participation in the professional development intervention. The study of these social emotional factors with elementary age African-American students in high needs school settings has the potential to advance the knowledge of largely unexplored conceptual directions in need of systematic empirical scrutiny. The Talent Quest Model, based on the human capacity framework, is actualized in how teachers elicit and use student assets with regard to lessons, learning activities, and life science subject matter inside classrooms on an everyday basis. Hence, a major outcome will be modifying a developmentally appropriate measurement tool to gauge elementary level students' perspectives on their relational mattering and sense of belonging during life science lessons beyond its early development and pilot stage.