GP-IMPACT: Expanding HBCU Pathways for Geoscience Education

尽管有意义的STEM多样性和包容性努力，非洲裔美国人在地球科学领域的代表性仍然不成比例地不足。虽然国家标准早在六年级就介绍了这一领域，但许多教师缺乏开发内容或自信地提供地球科学教学和职业指导的熟练程度。传统黑人学院和大学（HBCU）是满足这些需求的未开发资源和机会。扩展HBCU地球科学教育途径项目建议开发和部署一个深度评估，以(1)影响中学教师准备课程和专业发展活动，实现(2)提高非裔美国人在地球科学领域的代表性。系统的方法将产生一个评估和改进工具，使用户能够根据hbcu和其他实体在地球科学方法、实践和结果方面的循证最佳实践来评估其机构方法；行政领导;机构支持，特别强调职前教师培训课程和项目。评价和加强是拟议工作的两个组成部分，各机构可使用它们来规范地解决所确定的任何差距。随着工具的两个阶段（评估和增强）的开发，然后相互映射，该团队预计将识别出有不足或缺失的增强工具来满足需求的空白。例如，HBCU Pathways小组之前的集体经验表明，需要开发和测试与文化相关的材料，因为它们对于接触和吸引来自代表性不足群体的学生至关重要。这些材料将帮助这些学生群体看到他们可以在地球科学领域的职业生涯和/或重要培训中扮演的角色。这些步骤中的每一步对于系统地确定增加地球科学多样性的前进道路都是至关重要的，这样我们就可以更全面地解决现有的环境问题，这些问题将在未来几年继续显现。“扩展HBCU地球科学教育途径”项目将开发和测试一个评估和增强工具，供HBCU和其他机构使用，这些机构可以接触或渴望吸引和支持非裔美国人学习地球科学，包括地球科学教育。由于过去半个世纪以来，地球科学的多样性和包容性努力取得了不太显著的增长，HBCU途径团队将使用一系列关键组件来支持非裔美国人在地球科学方面的成功，以开发该工具的评估组件。这包括机构/方案支持的力量以及地球科学课程和活动的能力，同时针对职前和在职教师。因此，HBCU Pathways将提供一个战略性的多维解决方案(1)来影响中学教师准备课程和专业发展活动，以实现(2)提高少数民族接触地球科学的机会的目标。这个多维和可扩展的解决方案将在前12个月内在3个机构开发和测试，并在后12个月内在另外2个机构进行测试。在每个阶段，增强资源将被审查和绘制，以推荐特定地点的规范性资源，以加强机构提供实践培训、开发地球科学内容和将地球科学纳入HBCU职前教师准备课程和项目的努力。核心跨学科团队和其他合作伙伴和顾问将利用理论驱动的干预设计和评估过程，制定有效、可持续、可扩展的机构和项目级干预措施。该方法将用于支持干预措施的发展，从一开始就将主要利益相关者，特别是教师教育者、地区学校系统代表和地球科学家聚集在一起，仔细审查和处理提出的方法，以实现合理、可行和可测试的评估方法和增强活动。这也将与教育工作者准备标准认证委员会保持一致。此外，这项集中精力系统地开发和完成可扩展、互动、利益相关者驱动的深潜过程的测试，将有助于HBCU和更广泛的教育界通过访问未开发的HBCU社区资源和机会来推进地球科学教育和劳动力发展。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。

Despite meaningful STEM diversity and inclusion efforts, African Americans remain disproportionately underrepresented in the geosciences. Though national standards introduce the field as early as the 6th grade, many teachers lack the proficiency to develop content or to confidently deliver instruction and career guidance in the Earth Sciences. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) are untapped resources and opportunities to meet these needs. The Expanding HBCU Pathways to Geoscience Education project proposes to develop and deploy a deep-dive assessment to (1) impact middle school teacher preparation curricula and professional development activities toward the goal of (2) improving African American representation in the geosciences. The systematic approach will result in an Evaluation and Enhancement Tool that will allow the user to assess their institutional approach with evidence-based best practices of HBCUs and other entities in geoscience methods, practices, and outcomes; administrative leadership; and institutional support with particular emphasis on pre-service teacher preparation curricula and programs. Evaluation and Enhancement are two components of the proposed work, which may be used by institutions to prescriptively address any gaps that are identified. As the 2 stages of the Tool (Evaluation & Enhancement) are developed and then mapped to each other, this team anticipates that voids will be identified for which there are inadequate or missing Enhancement Tools to meet the need. For example, previous collective experience of the HBCU Pathways group indicates that culturally relevant materials will need to be developed and tested as they are critical in reaching and attracting students from underrepresented groups. These materials would help these student groups see the role that they can fill with a career and/or significant training in the Geosciences. Each of these steps is essential in systematically determining the path forward for increasing diversity in the Geosciences so that we may more holistically address the environmental issues that exist and that will continue to be revealed in coming years.The Expanding HBCU Pathways to Geoscience Education project will develop and test an Evaluation and Enhancement Tool that can be used by HBCUs and other institutions that reach or aspire to attract and support African Americans in the Geosciences, including Geoscience Education. Because geoscience diversity and inclusion efforts over the past half century have resulted in a less than notable increase, the HBCU Pathways Team will use a range of critical components to supporting the success of African Americans in the Geosciences for the development of the Evaluation component of the Instrument. These include strength of institutional/ programmatic support and capacity for geoscience curricula and activities, while targeting pre-service and in-service teachers. Thus, HBCU Pathways will deliver a strategic multidimensional solution (1) to impact middle school teacher preparation curricula and professional development activities toward the goal of (2) improving minority access to the geosciences. This multidimensional and scalable solution will be developed and tested at 3 institutions in the first 12 months and 2 additional institutions in the second 12 months. At each stage, Enhancement Resources will be vetted and mapped to recommend site-specific prescriptive resources to fortify efforts by institutions to offer hands-on training, develop geoscience content, and deliver geosciences into HBCU pre-service teacher preparation curricula and programs. Core interdisciplinary teams and additional partners and advisors, will utilize a theory-driven process of intervention design and evaluation to develop an effective, sustainable, and scalable institutional and programmatic-level intervention. The approach will be used to support the development of interventions by bringing together key stakeholders, particularly Teacher Educators, Regional School-System Representatives, and Geoscientists from the start to scrutinize and address proposed approaches to achieving plausible, feasible, and testable assessment methods and enhancement activities. This will also be aligned with the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation standards. Additionally, this focused effort to systematically develop and complete testing of a scalable, interactive, stakeholder-driven deep dive process will assist the HBCU and broader Education community in advancing geoscience education and workforce development by accessing the untapped HBCU community resources and opportunities.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.