Alternative Pathways to Physics and Science Certification

纽约州立大学布法罗州立学院（BSC）、纽约州立大学詹姆斯敦社区学院、布法罗公立学校、BSC城市和农村教育卓越中心以及纽约州的其他州立大学的教师正在努力创建、制度化和普及必要的示范课程和机会，以显著增加获得认证并有资格教授物理科学和物理的学前教育教师的数量。 该项目提高了任职前教师准备的质量，并促进了纽约西部和整个纽约州教师的持续专业成长。 该项目正在作出特别努力，通过提供有针对性的奖学金、助学金和学生工资机会，招聘和支持任职人数不足和少数民族人口进入教师职业。项目活动包括在物理和物理科学内容的BSC研究生暑期研讨会课程的显着扩展。 这些课程是通过改革教学法来教授的，以创建一个研究生学分课程的夏季学院，每年夏天为多达90名教师和教师候选人提供。 项目教学加强了以标准为基础，以学生为中心的建构主义探究教学策略和物理教育研究（PER）知情的教学方法的发展。 暑期学院课程支持各种认证的替代途径。 项目活动还包括开发和推广一系列从小学延伸到硕士教师的经验，促进物理和科学教师的招聘、准备、认证、上岗、专业发展和支持。 该项目正在创建一套教师培训模式，可推广到其他专门从事教师培训的学院和大学，并将在期刊和相关的地方和国家会议上发表和传播。

Faculty of SUNY Buffalo State College (BSC), SUNY Jamestown Community College, Buffalo Public Schools, the BSC Center for Excellence in Urban and Rural Education, and other SUNY colleges throughout New York State are working to create, institutionalize and populate model programs and opportunities necessary to significantly increase the number of preK-12 teachers who are certified and well-qualified to teach physical science and physics. This project improves the quality of pre-service teacher preparation, and continued professional growth for teachers in Western New York and throughout New York State. This project is making particular efforts to recruit and support under-represented and minority populations into the teaching profession via the provision of targeted scholarships, assistantships and student wage opportunities. Project activities include significant expansion of BSC graduate summer workshop courses in physics and physical science content. These courses are taught via reformed teaching pedagogy to create a summer academy of graduate credit courses offered to as many as 90 teachers and teacher candidates each summer. Project instruction reinforces the development of standards-based, student-centered constructivist-inquiry teaching strategies and Physics Education Research (PER)-informed pedagogical methods. Summer academy offerings support a variety of alternative tracks to certification. Project activities also include developing and promoting a chain of experiences extending from grade school through master teacher experiences promoting physics and science teacher recruitment, preparation, certification, induction, professional development and support. The project is creating a set of teacher preparation models transferable both to other colleges and universities specializing in teacher preparation and will be published and disseminated in journals and at relevant local and national conferences.