CAREER: Job Embedded Education on Computational Thinking for Rural STEM Discipline Teachers

该项目将开发一种新的方式，让教师在课堂上从事专业学习，同时履行其有偿工作任务。传统的专业发展结构经常给教师带来财政和职业压力，这限制了教师的参与。尤其是农村教师，由于距离的障碍、有限的资源和缺乏可用的人员，机会可能会更少。此外，他们经常依靠兼职的收入来履行经济义务，这意味着他们无法利用课余时间、周末或暑期提供的可选职业发展机会，因为他们负担不起失去的收入或旅行时间。此外，他们最有可能资历不足，最有可能在他们的第一个学区度过整个教学生涯--预期会教授他们所在社区的几代学生。夏威夷州有很高比例的农村学校，但STEM教师短缺--特别是在计算机科学领域。这个项目将调查一种专业发展模式，使用逐渐褪色的脚手架(支持随着时间的推移逐渐减少)，作为参与者有偿暑期学校教学的一部分。通过这种模式，20名乡村教师将学习整合计算思维、编码和科学内容，同时与自己社区的学生合作，10名教师成为全州支持他人的大师教师。提高教师的能力，使学生做好准备，使他们能够从STEM和计算机领域的机会中受益，这将促进学生未来的发展机会。这一职业发展项目将开发一种专业发展模式，使农村中学教师能够学习和发展与计算思维相关的教学技能，并提供长期支持和支架，以建立他们的知识和他们所在学区的长期能力。使用基于设计的研究方法，该项目需要广泛的参与者访谈、视频观察和课堂人工制品分析。文化历史活动理论分析将在集体和比较案例研究形式下应用，以了解教师个人在其自身内容和课堂范围内随时间的发展情况。这些数据将为随后的迭代设计决策提供信息，以修改策略和材料，以便在支持教师实施计算机科学和计算思维应用程序方面具有更大的意义和实用价值。该项目将提高大约1000名学生(主要是太平洋岛民，这一群体在STEM领域的代表性很低，具有独特的文化特征)的学术成就，以满足下一代科学标准和夏威夷的计算机科学教育标准。该职业计划是美国国家科学基金会(NSF)范围内的一项活动，旨在为那些通过杰出的研究、卓越的教育以及在其组织使命范围内整合教育和研究而体现教师学者作用的初级教师提供奖励。该项目得到了美国国家科学基金会发现研究预科-12(DRK-12)计划的支持。DRK-12旨在通过研究和开发创新的资源、模式和工具，显著提高K-12学前班学生和教师的科学、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。

This project will develop a new way of engaging teachers in professional learning that is situated in their classrooms while they perform the tasks of their paid employment. Traditional professional development structures frequently place financial and professional pressures on teachers, which limits participation. Rural teachers in particular may have fewer opportunities due to barriers of distance, limited resources, and lack of available staff. In addition, they often rely on the income from second jobs to meet their financial obligations, meaning they are unable to take advantage of optional professional development opportunities offered after school hours, on weekends, or during summers because they cannot afford the lost income or travel time. Further, they are most likely to be underqualified and most likely to spend their entire teaching careers at their first district—prospectively teaching multiple generations of students from their community. The state of Hawaii has a high proportion of such rural schools and a shortage of STEM teachers — especially in the area of computer science. This project will investigate a professional development model using fading scaffolds (support that is gradually reduced over time) as part of participants’ paid summer school teaching. Through this model, 20 rural teachers will learn to integrate computational thinking, coding, and science content while working with students from their own communities, with 10 becoming master teachers supporting others throughout the state. Improving teachers’ ability to prepare students to benefit from opportunities in STEM and computing will advance students’ opportunities for future prosperity. This CAREER project will develop a professional development model that allows rural secondary teachers to learn and develop computational thinking related teaching skills with long-term support and scaffolds in place to both build their knowledge and the long-term capacity of their school districts. Using a design-based research approach, this project entails extensive participant interviews, video observations, and analysis of classroom artifacts. Cultural-historical activity theory analysis will be applied both collectively and within a comparative case study format to understand individual teacher development within the context of their own content and classrooms over time. These data will inform subsequent iterative design decisions to revise strategies and materials for greater meaningfulness and utility in supporting teachers' implementation of computer science and computational thinking applications. This project will enhance academic achievement of approximately 1000 students (predominantly Pacific Islanders, a group largely underrepresented in STEM fields with a unique cultural identity) in meeting the Next Generation Science Standards and Hawaii's computer science education standards. The CAREER program is a National Science Foundation (NSF)-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This project is supported by NSF's Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-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.