Supporting Rural STEM Middle School Teachers and Career Counselors in the Development of Effective STEM Content and Career Development Experiences

支持农村 STEM 中学教师和职业顾问开发有效的 STEM 内容和职业发展经验

• 批准号: 2300747
• 负责人: Dodie Limberg
• 金额: $ 281.77万
• 依托单位: University of South Carolina at Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-01 至 2027-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2300747&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Supporting; Rural; STEM; Middle; Teachers

Rural youth, in particular, have limited opportunities to gain exposure, develop interests, and broaden participation in the STEM workforce. While school counselors may have extensive training in career development, STEM teachers face many challenges effectively infusing career development into their instruction. This project will provide rural STEM middle school teachers and career counselors professional development and the support needed to collaborate with each other and local community assets in designing, integrating, and implementing effective STEM content and career development activities. Local teams will co-develop project-based learning units that incorporate a place-based education perspective involving STEM assets, careers, and stakeholders from the local communities for middle school rural youth that intentionally infuse STEM careers in their area with STEM content. Research aims of the study seek to explore the sense of job satisfaction, isolation, and impact to STEM practice experienced by rural teachers and counselors as a result of their collaboration in this professional development model as well as student STEM-relevant motivation, self-efficacy, and learning after participating in the units. This project will examine the feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness of a collaborative teacher development model on both teacher and career counselor career development, as well as student outcomes. Sixty middle school teachers and 30 school counselors from 16 rural schools that serve over 6,000 students will participate in an intensive, multi-faceted, professional development experience involving collaboration and curricular development. Researchers will use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to examine the impact of their collaboration experiences on teacher and career counselor professional development and practice. Student outcomes will include teacher assessments of students' deeper learning (i.e., creativity, innovation, critical thinking), the impact of collaboration, and students' self-reports of their STEM motivation, STEM career interests, and self-efficacy. In addition to impacts on middle school student interest in STEM careers, the formal evaluation of the core model will allow the research team to develop information on promising processes for inclusive design. Examples of the learning experiences deemed to be of high impact in the contexts in which the projects are to be carried out, enabling others to successfully implement place-based career infused authentic STEM problem-based learning across diverse contexts. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) 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.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.

尤其是农村青年，在STEM劳动力中获得接触、发展兴趣和扩大参与的机会有限。虽然学校辅导员可能在职业发展方面接受了广泛的培训，但STEM教师在将职业发展有效地融入他们的教学中面临着许多挑战。该项目将为农村STEM中学教师和职业辅导员提供专业发展和所需的支持，以便彼此和当地社区资产在设计、整合和实施有效的STEM内容和职业发展活动方面进行合作。当地团队将共同开发基于项目的学习单元，纳入以地点为基础的教育视角，涉及STEM资产、职业和来自当地社区的利益相关者，为农村中学青年有意将STEM内容注入他们所在地区的STEM职业生涯。本研究旨在探讨乡村教师与辅导员在此专业发展模式下所经历的工作满足感、孤独感及对STEM实践的影响，以及学生STEM相关动机、自我效能感及参与单位后的学习情况。本项目将考察教师和职业辅导员职业发展以及学生成果方面的合作教师发展模式的可行性、可接受性和适当性。来自16所农村学校的60名中学教师和30名学校辅导员将为6000多名学生提供服务，他们将参加一次密集的、多方面的专业发展体验，包括协作和课程开发。研究人员将使用调查、访谈和焦点小组来检验他们的合作经验对教师和职业顾问专业发展和实践的影响。学生的成绩将包括教师对学生更深入的学习(即创造力、创新能力、批判性思维)、协作的影响以及学生对其STEM动机、STEM职业兴趣和自我效能的自我报告。除了影响中学生对STEM职业的兴趣外，对核心模型的正式评估将使研究团队能够开发关于包容性设计的有前景的过程的信息。学习经验的例子被认为在项目将要实施的情况下具有很大的影响，使其他人能够成功地在不同的情况下实施以地方为基础的职业灌输真实的STEM基于问题的学习。探索研究PREK-12计划(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高Pre-K-12学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)方面的学习和教学。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，为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验上的证明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。