Opportunities to Learn: Creative Science Through Inquiry, a Middle Grades Teaming Framework

该项目将推进学生和教师创新技术体验（ITEST）计划的努力，以更好地理解和促进提高学生在科学，技术，工程或数学（STEM）领域追求职业生涯的动机和能力的做法，为学生创造性地通过探究学习科学的机会。该项目将使72名中学教师做好准备，与大约1800名来自经济困难学校的学生一起工作，这些学生很少有机会参加技术丰富的、以探究为基础的学习环境。它将通过数学，科学，技术和英语/语言艺术的课程模型来检查连贯的经验，以便STEM以有意义的，相关的方式在整个学年的课程中协同注入。该项目采用团队设计，将大学和社区学院的教职员工以及行业合作伙伴与中学教师联系起来。通过这一努力，教育工作者和专家团队将开发，测试，完善和注入STEM原则到常规课堂活动中，使学生能够通过技术和技术写作增强的数学和科学体验STEM的相互联系。该项目将有助于满足国家的需要，增加进入高中的学生的多样性，这些学生更好地准备选择可能导致未来STEM职业的课程。该项目将采用混合方法设计，通过问卷调查、焦点小组、观察、访谈、录像带和前后测试收集数据。学生的科学成就和对STEM事业的处置增加将使用准实验设计进行分析。将使用倾向评分匹配过程将组与亚组倾向评分匹配分析等同，以检查性别、种族和SES的治疗效果。重复的措施将被用来检查教师自我效能的增加，通过调查和定性方法，以确定成功和挑战，以实施合作，跨学科的经验，为学生的科学教学。该项目将提供一个模型框架，指导教师创建和实施协作STEM课程单元，使行业/社区学院/STEM专业人员参与规划，教学和评估过程。通过该框架开发的学生体验将使学生接触到令人兴奋的，相关的STEM课程，展示他们的学术课程的相互联系。制定的模式将加强教师团队，同时建立教师的自我效能，以提供跨学科的STEM课程。传播工作有两个方面：反馈和社区分享。 关于这个模型的反馈将通过来自STEM学科专业人士的学术演讲来收集。该项目网站还将提供框架和样本活动的访问，以及对模型作出反应的机会。

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by developing opportunities for students to learn creatively in science through inquiry. The project will prepare 72 middle school teachers to work with approximately 1800 students from economically disadvantaged schools who have had few opportunities to participate in technology-rich, inquiry-based learning environments. It will examine coherent sets of experiences through curricular models across mathematics, science, technology and English/language arts so that STEM is collaboratively infused in meaningful, relevant ways into the curriculum throughout the school year. Using a team design, the project will engage university and community college faculty members and industry partners with middle school teachers. Through this effort, teams of educators and experts will develop, test, refine, and infuse STEM principles into regular classroom activities so that students can experience the interconnectedness of STEM through mathematics and science enhanced by technology and technical writing. This project will help address the nations' need to increase the diversity of students entering high school who are better prepared to make course selections that will potentially lead to future STEM careers. The project will use a mixed methods design to capture data through questionnaires, focus groups, observations, interviews, videotapes and pre-post tests. Student increases in science achievement and dispositions towards STEM careers will be analyzed using a quasi-experimental design. A propensity score matching process will be used to equate group with sub-group propensity score matching analysis to examine treatment effects by gender, ethnicity, and SES. Repeated measures will be used to examine increases in teacher self-efficacy for teaching science through inquiry and qualitative methods to identify successes and challenges to implementing the collaborative, cross-disciplinary experiences for students. This project will provide a model framework to guide teachers into creating and implementing collaborative STEM lesson units that will engage industry/community college/STEM professionals in the planning, teaching, and evaluating process. Student experiences developed through the framework will expose students to exciting, relevant STEM curriculum that demonstrates the interconnectedness of their academic courses. The enacted model will enhance the teacher teams while building the self-efficacy of the teachers to deliver STEM lessons across the disciplines. Dissemination efforts are two-fold: feedback and community sharing. Feedback on this model will be garnered through academic presentations from professionals across the STEM disciplines. The project website will also provide access to the framework and sample activities as well as opportunities to react to the model.