Engaging Noyce Scholars in Anti-Racist Community-Based Teaching in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics

The project aims to serve the national need of preparing high-quality teachers in biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics to teach in high-need schools. From the recruitment through the induction of scholars, the project focuses on community engagement. The incorporation of community-based inquiry as a form of effective STEM teaching positions school communities as sources of strength and knowledge.

This project intends to prepare STEM teachers who will strengthen the STEM persistence rates of marginalized groups by providing anti-racist, community-based science and mathematics instruction that gives secondary students the skills and experiences to understand how STEM can positively impact their own communities. The project develops and evaluates a model for preparing high school STEM teachers who can use their instruction to positively address the very conditions that have limited who in our country takes part in mathematics and science.

This project includes partnerships among National-Louis University (NLU), a private university, Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), a private, technology focused undergraduate university, and Chicago Public Schools. The project will provide 22 Secondary-level STEM teacher candidates (Noyce Scholars) $15,000 scholarships over the course of the students’ last two years (4 semesters) of their coterminous BS/MAT degree programs in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, or Physics.

In addition to scholarships, the project will engage these students in activities that build their capacity for community-based STEM inquiry. The project centers on a liberatory form of education by preparing Noyce Scholars to be anti-racist, community-based STEM teachers. Through mentored cohorts, communities of practice, and structured and supported field experiences in Chicago Public Schools, scholars will develop three interrelated capacities, namely: 1) familiarity with and commitment to serving in high-need school environments; 2) a deep knowledge of the systemic inequities within STEM and how it impacts their students and their students’ communities; and 3) the pedagogical content knowledge to enact STEM learning opportunities that connect to the reality of students’ lives, including the strengths and sources of knowledge in their communities.

Once the scholars graduate, they will continue to receive two years of support and guidance through an induction coach, a site-based school mentor, and a professional learning community. The induction process will include social-emotional support for Noyce Scholar graduates as they discuss and collaborate around different problems of practice related to being an anti-racist community-based STEM educator.

Additional induction themes for the new teachers will include how to identify and leverage financial, human and social capital resources and development of an understanding of the ‘hidden’ or ‘unstated’ curriculum of and navigation within a high-need school or district. The project’s research and evaluation will generate new knowledge and fill gaps in the literature related to building engagement with community into teacher preparation and building the STEM engagement of diverse sets of students.

The project’s commitment to community is further realized through the embedded Delphi study that applies a research process to understanding a broad range of perspectives on the possibilities of community-based STEM instruction. This Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends 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 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.