Building Leadership among Science Teachers in Rural Regions: Designing, Developing, and Implementing a Science Teacher Leadership Academy

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This project aims to serve the national need to prepare high-quality science teacher leaders in high-need, rural areas. Given the disparities in the quality and quantity of science education in rural spaces, this project is designed to support and develop two cohorts of grade K-8 Master Teaching Fellows (MTFs) into science teacher leaders in rural South Carolina (SC). One cohort will be comprised of twelve grade K-5 experienced and exemplary teachers and one cohort of twelve grade 6-8 exemplary and experienced teachers. This five-year program consists of several components, including a Leadership Simulation, a Summer Institute, and Summer Conferences. Additional elements of the program that each MTF will undertake are the completion of differentiated online modules designed to support specific learning needs and goals, implementation of a professional learning and leadership plan, collaboration with principals, attending and presenting at the National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) conference, and receiving differentiated coaching in MTF classrooms. The program is designed to allow MTFs to focus on becoming expert science teachers the first two years while learning about themselves as leaders and beginning to think about how change occurs. In the last three years of the program, the focus aims on developing MTFs as leaders, continuing to work on honing leadership knowledge and skills. Ultimately, MTFs will be encouraged to lead in their schools and districts by mentoring, leading professional development, and seeking other ways to support other science teachers. In doing so, the number of science teacher leaders in the SC upstate region will be increased and science education in upstate SC will be impacted. This project at Clemson University includes partnerships with WestEd’s Making Sense of Science and high-need, rural school districts (Ware Shoals School District, Laurens County School District, and Union County School District), in the upstate region of SC. Project goals include the implementation of differentiated professional development and coaching over the course of five years for two cohorts of teachers to produce teacher leaders who can effect change within their rural schools and school systems. This work is grounded in situated learning and the science teacher leader framework and seeks to explore the following questions. 1) How does change happen in a rural school system via teacher leaders? 2) In what ways does rurality support or hinder teacher leadership? and 3) What are key leverage points in rural spaces that support rigorous science education? A mixed-method investigation of these questions is intended to result in findings that are expected to contribute to the understanding of professional learning and the under-examined field of teacher leadership in the STEM research literature. Project results will be widely disseminated through national and regional channels to improve K-12 science education. The project will collaborate with the South Carolina Department of Education to share asynchronous modules that can be replicated by districts and state subject area coaches as part of their regular professional learning and development for teachers. This study addresses a significant issue in education - the current absence of teacher leaders in STEM disciplines, particularly in rural communities - with the goal of increasing the number of science teacher leaders in the SC upstate region. This Track 3: Master Teacher Fellowships project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention of K-12 STEM 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.