Rural Integrated STEM Education: Middle and High School Teacher Pathways Developed Through a Regional Alliance

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With support from the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, this project aims to serve the national interest in high quality STEM teaching by increasing the number of talented and adaptive STEM teachers in rural California. This project will build capacity to educate STEM teachers by developing a plan to recruit, prepare, and support undergraduate STEM students from two-year and four-year colleges to teach in rural, high-need middle and high schools. By transforming the early experiences of future teachers, the project aims to develop highly qualified STEM educators capable of investing in the next generation of scientists in rural districts and communities. The project partners will develop a plan for two-year teacher preparation pathways that focus on inquiry experiences and STEM research in the first two years of college.The project will establish a regional alliance between three post-secondary Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and the County Office of Education, which represents 24 school districts in California's Central Coast region. This alliance will collaboratively develop early-access STEM teacher pathways. The HSIs (California State University Monterey Bay, Hartnell College, and Monterey Peninsula College) will plan how to integrate evidence-based components into early STEM teacher pathways. These components include active learning and culturally responsive pedagogy, with the expectation that the additions will contribute to STEM teacher diversity. The Next Generation Science Standards Regional Collaborative Teacher Network, coordinated by the County Office of Education, will provide prospective teachers with access to an inclusive STEM community of practice, which includes in-service teachers with expertise in STEM-teaching best practices. The project action plan will identify steps to develop early STEM inquiry, teaching, and mentored research opportunities. The project has the potential to develop a model for broadening the pool of STEM students who enter teacher education programs at the California Community College System (113 colleges) and the California State University System (23 universities). As a result, this project may provide a blueprint for an expanded STEM teacher preparation pipeline, thus helping to address rural STEM teacher shortages and broaden the pool of highly-qualified STEM teachers. The NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become K-12 mathematics and science teachers in high-need school districts and in-service 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.