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.

特别是农村青年，获得接触、发展兴趣和扩大参与STEM劳动力的机会有限。虽然学校辅导员可能在职业发展方面接受过广泛的培训，但STEM教师在有效地将职业发展融入他们的教学中面临许多挑战。该项目将为农村STEM中学教师和职业顾问提供专业发展和所需的支持，以便在设计、整合和实施有效的STEM内容和职业发展活动时相互合作，并与当地社区资产合作。当地团队将共同开发基于项目的学习单元，其中包含基于地方的教育视角，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。本研究旨在探讨农村教师和辅导员在这一专业发展模式下的工作满意度、孤独感和对STEM实践的影响，以及学生参与单元后的STEM相关动机、自我效能感和学习。本项目将探讨合作教师发展模式对教师和职业咨询师职业发展以及学生成果的可行性、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，他们将参与一项涉及合作和课程开发的密集、多方面的专业发展体验。研究人员将使用调查、访谈和焦点小组来检查他们的合作经验对教师和职业咨询师专业发展和实践的影响。学生成果将包括教师对学生深度学习（即创造力、创新、批判性思维）、协作影响的评估，以及学生关于STEM动机、STEM职业兴趣和自我效能感的自我报告。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有关包容性设计有前途的过程的信息。学习经验的例子被认为在项目实施的背景下具有很高的影响，使其他人能够在不同的背景下成功地实施基于地点的职业注入的真正的STEM问题学习。探索研究preK-12项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高preK-12学生和教师对科学、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，为拟议的项目提供了理论和实证依据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。