A state wide professional development program in engineering with science and math teachers in Alabama: Fostering conceptual understandings of STEM

摘要

The Robotics and Engineering Education-Fostering the Conceptual Understanding of Science (RE~2-FoCUS) project is a 3-year teacher professional development (TPD) initiative designed to stimulate project-based STEM education throughout the state of Alabama. The immediate purpose of the project is to increase the number of middle school students in Alabama who participate in STEM-centered, project-based learning activities and programs that promote teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking skills, and authentic, real-world situations. Teacher professional development, when it is sustained, intensive, and content focused, has the potential to significantly and positively impact not only teacher performance, but student learning (Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). Through a targeted and intensive professional development experience, middle school science and math teachers in this study learned how to implement engineering design into their existing science and math classes. The long-term goal of this intervention is to positively impact student achievement in math and science in the state of Alabama. The need for improved student achievement in this state is dire. In 2011, Alabama 8th grade students ranked 48th in the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science test (IES, 2011), and Alabama ranked 41st in 2011 on the science portion of the ACT with an average score of 20.1 (ACT, 2011). There is much room for improvement.