Cultivating Relationships: Partnering with Teachers and Tribes to Integrate Indigenous and School STEM Knowledge

教师很少进入K-12教室，了解土著人民，民族，或了解土著人民如何实践他们与土地和景观的关系。这种知识差距严重影响了土著青年，他们在教育机会，完成成果和STEM代表性方面持续存在差距。为了解决这一知识差距，必须发展教师专业学习，在STEM教育中重视部落领导和土著知识。该项目将来自四个部落国家合作伙伴的跨学科研究人员和专家联系起来，以开发和实施将土著知识融入STEM教学的在职教师专业证书计划。这种多地点的教师专业发展模式将招收K-12教师在农村西部的四个不同的原住民服务地区进入一个为期12个月的证书课程，结合土著科学，耦合人类和自然系统，土地教育概念到一个体验式学习周期与当地和广泛的学习与土地。参与教师将获得关键的知识，以解决认识论的多样性和经验工具的核心，以解决土地和生活方式的变化在土著和农村社区的复杂问题。该项目将增加关于当地认识论和实践以及国家科学标准在四个特定土著背景下的可转移性的知识，并扩大部落主导的专业发展空间，以改变教师的课堂实践。该奖项由发现研究preK-12计划（DRK-12）资助，旨在通过研究和开发创新资源，模型和工具，显着提高preK-12学生和教师的科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，这些研究和开发工作为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验依据。研究将遵循定性的多站点案例研究方法来回答这些问题：教师如何在土著，基于地方的土地教育证书计划中理解多种STEM认识论？哪些类型的教师发展活动支持将土著认识论纳入STEM校本实践？ 教师以何种方式将从土著STEM学习应用到他们的课程和教学选择中？三个主要目标将支持该项目的中心研究问题：1）发展跨站点的伙伴关系团队，以指导教师专业发展的设计与统一和特定站点的内容; 2）为教师实施特定站点的沉浸式STEM学习机会和一个环绕式的专业发展证书计划，以支持教学理解; 3）研究课程对教师的影响，即，关于课堂上学习和教学选择的轨迹。收集的数据将包括前和后的调查，符号为基础的思考，小组访谈和谈话圈与教师，教师的做法和课堂观察。该研究将有助于教师教育计划和专业实践的创新，并为K-12创造更公平和包容的陆基STEM教育模式。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Teachers rarely come into K-12 classrooms with an understanding of Indigenous peoples, nations, or a sense of how Indigenous peoples practice their ways of knowing in relationship to land and landscapes. This knowledge gap acutely impacts Indigenous youth who experience persistent disparities in educational opportunities, completion outcomes, and STEM representation. To address this knowledge gap, it is imperative to develop teacher professional learning that privileges tribal leadership and Indigenous knowledge in STEM education. This project connects interdisciplinary researchers and experts from four tribal nation partners to develop and implement an in-service teacher professional certificate program that integrates Indigenous Knowledge into STEM teaching. This multi-sited teacher professional development model will enroll K-12 teachers in four different Native-serving regions of the rural West into a 12-month certificate program that combines Indigenous science, Coupled Human and Natural Systems, and Land education concepts into an experiential learning cycle with local and broad study of learning with the Land. Participating teachers will gain critical knowledge to address epistemological diversity and experiential tools central to addressing complex issues of land and lifeway changes in Indigenous and rural communities. The project will add knowledge about the transferability of local epistemologies and practices and national science standards within four specific Indigenous contexts and expand space for tribal-lead professional development to transform teacher classroom practice. This award is funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) which seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.The research will follow a qualitative multi-site case study approach to answer these questions: How do teachers make sense of multiple STEM epistemologies during an Indigenous, place-based, land education certificate program? What types of teacher development activities support the inclusion of Indigenous epistemologies in STEM school-based practices? In what ways do teachers apply learning from Indigenous STEM into their curricular and pedagogical choices? Three main objectives will support the project’s central research questions: 1) Development of cross-site Partnership Teams to guide design of teacher professional development with unifying and site-specific content; 2) Implementation of site-specific immersive STEM learning opportunities for teachers and a wrap-around professional development certificate program to support pedagogical understanding; 3) Research into the impact of curriculum for teachers, i.e., on trajectories of learning and pedagogical choices in the classroom. Collected data will include pre- and post-surveys, symbol-based reflections, group interviews and talking circles with teachers, and classroom observations of teacher practice. The research will contribute to innovations in teacher education programs and professional practice and create more equitable and inclusive Land-based STEM education models for K-12.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.