REU Site: STEM CATS: Creating Academic Teacher Scholars in STEM Education

肯塔基大学REU项目的目标是通过培养STEM教师的高级思维技能和对STEM的深入概念性理解来培养STEM教师，他们自己将调查研究证实的最佳实践。该项目将通过与肯塔基大学STEM教育部附属的8名成功的教师导师进行原创研究，使24名任职前的K-12 STEM教师及时接触到STEM教与学的问题。该项目还将提供经验，可能会增加蓝草社区和技术学院的学生成为K-12 STEM教师的兴趣。在项目期间，职前STEM教师将参与对具有国家和国际影响的当地教育问题的真实调查，如空间识别、非正式学习、数学经验和概念。该项目将帮助学生认识到社会与教育和研究之间的相互作用，特别是关于在不同的学习群体中培养STEM扫盲的多种变革性手段。学生们将接触到社会科学方法的实际应用，他们最终可以在自己的STEM课堂上练习这些方法。还将向学生介绍影响这些方法的更广泛的问题，例如伦理如何影响某些假设的测试，以及社会偏见可能如何影响关于使用哪些方法和如何报告结果的研究。每学期将从所有参与者那里收集形成性信息，以监控朝着目标的进展并指导项目改进。总结性信息将包括纵向成果数据分析，以确定总体影响。虽然定量数据将被用来发现学生的效能感和继续研究的可能性之间的相关性(研究自我效能感量表和NSF生物学的本科生研究学生自我评估)，但将进行半结构化访谈，以发现参与者如何对项目做出个别反应，这些参与者因各种因素而有所不同。

The goal of this University of Kentucky REU project is to prepare STEM teachers by fostering the development of their higher order thinking skills and deep conceptual STEM understanding based on research-confirmed best practices that they, themselves will investigate. The project will expose 24 pre-service K-12 STEM teachers to timely problems involving STEM teaching and learning through original research conducted with eight successful faculty mentors affiliated with University of Kentucky's STEM Education Department. The project will also provide experiences that may increase the interest of students from Bluegrass Community and Technical College in becoming K-12 STEM teachers.During the project pre-service STEM teachers will participate in authentic inquiry into local educational issues with national and international implications such as spatial recognition, informal learning, and mathematics experiences and conceptions. The project will help the students to cultivate an appreciation of the interplay between society and education and research, especially concerning the multiple transformative means of fostering STEM literacy across diverse learner populations. Students will be exposed to hands-on application of the social-scientific methods that they could eventually practice in their own STEM classrooms. Students will also be introduced to broader issues impacting these methods such as how ethics affect testing of certain hypotheses and how social biases might influence research with respect to which methodologies are used and how results are reported. Formative information will be collected each semester from all involved to monitor progress toward goals and guide program improvements. Summative information will be comprised of longitudinal outcomes data analysis to determine overall impact. While quantitative data will be used to discover correlations between students' sense of efficacy and likelihood of continuing to research (the Research Self-efficacy Scale and the NSF Biology's Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment), semi-structured interviews will be conducted to discover how participants, who vary by a variety of factors, respond individually to the project.