Preparing a Community of Outstanding STEM Teachers for Rural and Urban Northeast Texas

这个Track 1 Robert Noyce教师奖学金项目将在五年内招募和培养32名学生，成为德克萨斯州东北部高需求学区的中学物理、化学、生物和数学教师。这一地区的各县都面临着中等STEM教育工作者短缺的问题。使这一问题更加复杂的是高流动率，至少部分原因是该地区STEM教师经常受到孤立。本项目将通过三个主要努力来解决这些问题。(i)有潜力的Noyce学者将在招聘活动中将教学作为一个有吸引力的首选职业选择，并在学生的学术生涯早期提供教学经验。（ii） Noyce学者将通过将其专业课程与教师认证课程相结合的教学轨道进行准备，并在每个专业开设专门的课程，涵盖特定学科的教学法、教育研究和文化响应教学。（iii） Noyce教师在当地高需求学校工作时，将得到个别导师教师以及由Noyce教师、Noyce学者、学习助理、在职教师和参与教师组成的相互支持的社区的支持。社区将定期举行会议，并将促进农村和城市地区之间的合作和交流。该项目位于德克萨斯农工大学商业分校（TAMUC），将由TAMUC、当地农村商业学区、卡多米尔斯和罗伊斯市以及为达拉斯-沃斯堡大都市和东部农村县提供服务的1区教育服务中心合作。在整个项目过程中，32名STEM教师将分成四组，每组8人，以满足德克萨斯州东北部农村和城市高需求学校的需求。为此，项目团队将遵循三个步骤。首先，它将通过广泛的广告宣传活动提高人们对该计划及其好处的认识。其次，它将每年招收24名大一和大二学生参加一个扩展学习助理（LA）项目，在物理、化学、生物和数学的入门课程中授课。第三，团队将从洛杉矶招募诺伊斯学者和社区大学的转校生。诺伊斯学者将有两名导师，一名在职教师和一名项目团队成员。LA和Noyce项目对新教师教学实践的影响以及LA和Noyce项目对学科特定身份、教师身份和职业兴趣的影响都将被衡量。有关项目实施的细节、通过实践社区活动创建的材料和研究结果将在同行评议的STEM教育期刊、地方和国家会议以及项目网站上报告。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Track 1 Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program will recruit and prepare thirty-two students over five years to become secondary physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics teachers in high-needs school districts in Northeast Texas. Counties in this region suffer from a shortage of secondary STEM educators. Compounding this problem are high turnover rates that are at least partially caused by the isolation that STEM teachers in this region often experience. This project will address these problems through three primary efforts. (i) Potential Noyce Scholars will be recruited with activities that present teaching as an attractive, first-choice career option and by providing students teaching experiences early in their academic careers. (ii) Noyce Scholars will be prepared through teaching tracks that combine their major courses with teacher certification courses and a dedicated class in each major which covers discipline-specific pedagogy, education research, and culturally-responsive teaching. (iii) Noyce Teachers will be supported as they work in local high-needs schools by individual mentor teachers and a mutually supportive community of Noyce Teachers, Noyce Scholars, learning assistants, in-service teachers, and participating faculty. The community will meet regularly and will foster collaboration and communication between rural and urban districts.Based at Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC), this project will be a collaboration between TAMUC, the local rural school districts of Commerce, Caddo Mills, and Royse City, and Region 1 Educational Service Center which serves the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and the rural counties to the east. Over the course of the project, thirty-two STEM teachers in four cohorts of eight will be prepared to meet the needs of both rural and urban high-needs schools in Northeast Texas. Towards this end the project team will follow a three-step process. First, it will raise awareness of the program and its benefits through a broad advertising campaign. Second, it will recruit twenty-four freshmen and sophomore students/year into an expanded learning assistant (LA) program in introductory physics, chemistry, biology, and math classes. Third, the team will recruit Noyce Scholars from the LA pool and community college transfer students. Noyce Scholars will have two mentors, an in-service teacher and a member of the project team. The impact of the LA and Noyce programs on the teaching practices of new teachers and the impact of the LA program and the Noyce program on discipline-specific identity, teacher identity, and career interests will all be measured. Details about the implementation of the project, materials created through the activities of the community of practice, and research results will be reported in peer-review STEM education journals, at local and national conferences, and on the project website.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.