Seeking Synergy: K-12 Professional Development as a Model for College Science Faculty

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It is a national priority to produce a well-prepared workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This workforce is needed to make progress in science, to advance national health initiatives, and support overall national prosperity in an increasingly technical economy. One contemporary challenge colleges and universities face in meeting this challenge is the need to provide effective professional development opportunities for faculty members. For example, professional development could help faculty learn about emerging research related to student learning, and this knowledge could inform teaching practices. This project aims to serve the national interest by convening professional development leaders from both K-12 and higher education to determine the design principles of a new model of professional development for college science teaching. This project is designed to draw upon evidence-based, effective professional development practices from the K-12 sector, and to apply these strategies to programs for faculty members teaching undergraduate biology students. Multiple K-12 models for professional development have been rigorously tested and shown to improve teacher knowledge, skill, and student learning. This gathering is designed to focus specifically on teaching and learning methods designed to reveal and respond to student thinking.This project will support a three-day conference to define the design principles of a new professional development program for college biology faculty. The model will derive components from K-12 professional development models and focus on helping faculty learn the pedagogy of revealing and responding to student thinking. The conference will extend the work of two well-established research and professional development groups in STEM education, the Automated Analysis of Constructed Response project (AACR) and the Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis project (STeLLA). AACR focuses on undergraduate science education and addresses: the creation of constructed-response assessments that reveal students' mental models of scientific concepts; the creation of machine learning models to predict experts' scoring of student responses; the production of reports for faculty that describe the computerized analysis of student writing; and long-term, local faculty learning communities that support faculty users of AACR. STeLLA supports K-12 teachers to view their teaching through the lens of student thinking. The efficacy of STeLLA's approach to professional development has been demonstrated through randomized and quasi-experimental studies that link teacher learning with increased student learning. The conference will include members of AACR and STeLLA as well as experts from other higher education and K-12 professional development arenas. The conference will produce a framework for developing a new college biology professional development program, which can be implemented and researched. It also will create a network of science education professional development specialists and researchers from both K-12 and higher education.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.