Reconstructing Research in Teacher Education to Provide Usable Knowledge and Support Teacher Education Improvement

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The long-term goal of this project, funded by EHR's Core Research Program, is to guide and support teacher education programs. Significant research work is currently available about how to best train STEM K-12 teachers. As a result, it is an appropriate time to reflect on what educational researchers have already learned and plan for new research designs and methods that can sustain and extend improvements in STEM teacher education. This project will work with STEM teacher educators to study existing research designs and develop new ones to use in STEM teacher education. Using research to improve STEM teacher education is likely to contribute to increased student learning in K-12 classrooms.Working in partnership with a group of STEM teacher educators, this two-year project aims to: 1) Develop strong research designs that can be realistically embedded in teacher education programs; 2) Identify key K-12 STEM classroom practices and design a proof-of-concept instrument to capture performance on one or more of these practices; 3) Publish working papers that provide guidance to teacher educators and others interested in improving research designs and developing new measures; 4) Conduct and report results of a proof-of-concept study that uses one of the newly developed research designs and measures to evaluate preservice teacher learning; and 5) Create a collaboration between teacher education researchers and educational methodologists aimed at increasing the generation and dissemination of new knowledge about effective STEM teacher education practices. This project includes strong collaborations among STEM education researchers and STEM Teacher Preparation programs, which may have long ranging benefits for improving STEM 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.