Making STEM Matter: Transforming Learning through Teacher Leadership, Justice-Centered Pedagogy, and Makerspace Technology

This project aims to serve the national need of developing highly effective teacher leaders of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) who can create sustainable improvements in middle grades and secondary STEM education. The five-year project establishes a professional learning community with 15 Master Teacher Fellows (MTFs) who are experienced and exemplary STEM teacher leaders in a large urban school district in Maryland, and committed to culturally responsive teaching.

The goal of the learning community is to support MTFs’ in transforming their instruction by: (1) integrating equity- and justice-centered STEM pedagogies and (2) leveraging makerspaces to introduce new opportunities for community-oriented STEM learning.

This collaborative project at Towson University and Morgan State University includes partnerships with Prince George’s County Public School System and Open Works, a nonprofit makerspace in Baltimore. The project aims to increase capacity for STEM teaching in Maryland by empowering a cohort of experienced and exemplary STEM teachers to become expert makers, culturally responsive classroom practitioners, and teacher leaders.

The project structure is designed to provide a scaffolded pathway that allows MTFs to enhance their knowledge of justice-centered STEM pedagogy and emerging technologies commonly found in makerspaces as they evolve as both teachers and teacher leaders. Through a series of planned leadership opportunities, the MTF program aims to allow MTFs' to share their knowledge by designing, implementing, and reflecting on multiple iterations of professional learning experiences, as well as offering practical knowledge to prospective and practicing teachers both within their district and across the state of Maryland.

This project will also produce a repository of maker-enhanced social justice STEM lessons, professional learning experiences for teachers, national and statewide presentations, refereed journal articles, and other dissemination products. This Track 3: Master Teaching Fellowships 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 effectiveness and retention 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.