Building Capacity and Collaborations to Prepare Equity-minded STEM Teachers

The project aims to serve the national need to recruit, support, and train STEM teachers in science education and equity practices. This training is locally critical as Illinois continues to experience teacher shortages in many STEM areas, while also seeking to increase representation of science teachers from underrepresented groups. Specifically, the project will seek to increase teachers’ capacity to work with diverse student populations as well as improve the achievement of K-12 students in STEM subjects.

To lay the foundation for achieving this goal, the project will partner with local high-need schools, minority-serving community colleges and local STEM organizations. The project intends to strengthen partnerships with several districts in and around Chicago, develop mentoring programs for pre-service and early-career STEM teachers, and refine curricula to smooth the pathway to the classroom for teacher candidates in several STEM disciplines.

This project at North Central College will include partnerships with Chicago Public Schools and J. Sterling Morton High School District 201. Project goals include: (a) strengthening science education collaboration within North Central College to develop and advertise clear pathways for students to double major in education and a science discipline; (b) expanding achievable pathways in science education for a diverse population of students transferring from community colleges; (c) collaborating with high-need local educational agencies to recruit high school students and, later, as sites for clinical placements of education candidates; (d) training candidates in use of equitable instructional strategies; and (f) supporting pre-service and early career STEM teachers through mentorship.

In addition, the project will conduct surveys and semi-structured interviews to better determine needs and interests among individuals eligible to pursue science teacher licensure. Data will be analyzed by the team and independent external evaluators, and knowledge gained will be reported to all partners. The intellectual merit and broader impacts of this proposal are closely tied to the project's major aims of (a) establishing pathways designed to increase the number, quality, and diversity of licensed science educators in the Chicago area, and (b) initiating systems to improve the supports provided to candidates and new teachers to help increase their efficacy with all students and retain them in teaching.

This Capacity Building project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.

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.