Conference Proceeding

The Impact of STEM Graduate Students in the Professional Development of Middle School Teachers Implementing a Problem-Based Inquiry Learning Curriculum

Llewellyn, Donna C, Hendricks, Cher C, Barbara Burks Fasse

2011

Overview

The Impact of STEM Graduate Students in the Professional Development of Middle School Teachers Implementing a Problem-Based Inquiry Learning CurriculumAxxxx Bxxxx: Cxxxx Dxxxx, Exxxx, and Fxxxx (ABCDEF) is a five year NSF-funded researchproject that involves collaboration between k-12 educators, university faculty, and educationaloutreach specialists. The project’s objective is to design and implement a problem-based inquirycurriculum using engineering design and LEGO robotics as the context for teaching eighth gradephysical science content and process skills. One of the components of the project is to utilizeSTEM graduate students (Fellows) to support curriculum goals and facilitate student learningwhile providing the Fellows with k-12 classroom experience. A long-term goal of our project isto study the impact of the Fellows on the professional development of teachers in terms of (a)implementation of the instructional strategies, (b) increasing teaching efficacy, (c) developmentof content knowledge, and (d) delivery of the ABCDEF curriculum with fidelity. In this firstreport of the study, we begin to investigate the impact of the Fellows on seven teachers in sixclassrooms in three middle school contexts: rural, urban, suburban.This research report utilizes ethnographic methods in a multiple case study design. Data sourcesinclude group and individual interviews with the Fellows and the teachers, fieldnotes fromobservations, classroom artifacts, self-report documents such as surveys, and the Fellows’weekly journals. Factors of interest include teacher-Fellow interdependence, confidence, powerdistribution, science content knowledge, teacher practices, and implementation of problem-basedlearning pedagogy. Analyses will be used not only to describe ways in which Fellows arecurrently impacting teachers’ professional development but also to plan for ways Fellows canhave a greater impact on teachers’ professional development in the remaining years of the study.

• Publisher: American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE
• Subject: Case studies / Classrooms / College faculty / College students / Colleges & universities / Curricula / Design engineering / Efficacy / Ethnography / Fidelity / Graduate students / Inquiry method / Interdependence / Learning / Learning environment / Learning outcomes / Middle schools / Problem based learning / Professional development / Professional training / Robotics / Robots / Schools / Self report / Specialists / Students / Suburban areas / Suburban development / Teacher education / Teachers / Teaching / Technical education