Building Capacity towards Certification of Middle Grades STEM Teachers through Partnership, Needs Assessment, and Curriculum Revision

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With support from the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, this Capacity Building project aims to serve the national interest in high-quality STEM teaching by exploring curricular changes and potential partnerships to increase the number of highly qualified middle school teachers in STEM fields. The project will revise existing STEM curricula at Old Dominion University to be compatible with requirements for middle school STEM licensure in at least two of three areas: mathematics, science, and technology. The project also seeks to continue a partnership with Tidewater Community College and pursue stronger relationships with local area schools: Chesapeake City Public Schools, Norfolk City Public Schools, Portsmouth City Public Schools, Suffolk City Public Schools, and Franklin County Public Schools. Three additional partners will also be targeted: Thomas Nelson Community College, Norfolk State University, and the National Institute of Aerospace - Center for Integrative STEM Education. In addition to establishing these important partner relationships in preparation for development of a Noyce Track 1 proposal, the primary activities of the project will be curriculum revision and needs assessment. The proposed curriculum revisions aim to prepare middle school teachers for licensure in science and mathematics. The revision process will be applied to the Ocean and Earth Science major and refined for use with additional STEM majors. Changes will occur in upper-division science courses as well as elective mathematics courses, which will be re-designed to focus on depth of content relevant for middle school teachers. Extensive needs assessment will examine existing data, conduct semi-structured interviews, and survey a large stratified sample of high school students, community college students and alumni, and current undergraduates regarding needs and barriers with respect to pursuit of careers in teaching. The new knowledge gained by these activities will be disseminated to support both local recruiting efforts and research on STEM teacher preparation. The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 mathematics and science teachers in high-need school districts and experienced, exemplary K-12 STEM teachers to become STEM master teachers. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 teachers in high-need school districts.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.