Systemic Transformation of Inquiry Learning Environments for STEM award

This project will address a special challenge for schools: preparing educators to adopt an integrated approach to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This is especially important for educators in underserved urban populations where teacher expertise and guidance are necessary for meaningful student engagement with STEM. Frameworks for helping teachers make these changes are urgently needed, especially approaches that support new perspectives for STEM teaching and learning at the school level. This project will help teachers design and facilitate high-quality, real world STEM experiences for students, as teachers move from traditional approaches to organizing their teaching around interdisciplinary questions or problems. The project will work with building administrators to make the structural changes needed for interdisciplinary STEM instruction. School-based instructional coaches will develop new strategies for guiding STEM teaching and sustaining the work long-term.

The project goals are to: (1) determine the feasibility and utility of the refined project approach, (2) determine the utility of the project's implementation for facilitating change in teacher knowledge and practices, (3) understand the utility of the project's implementation for fostering student change, and (4) understand the extent to which the refined project model supports organizational change in schools. To do this, the program will make its professional development more accessible by adding a blended learning component, expanding the school leadership program, formalizing a training program for new facilitators, and identifying novel ways of defining student outcomes for transdisciplinary learning. The mixed methods research design will involve twenty schools (elementary and intermediate) in New York City and New Haven, CT. A quasi-experimental, within-school rotation model will randomize grade-level participation at the school level to yield a sample of at least 240 teachers, 3,000 students, 40 school-based coaches, and 20 administrators. Quantitative data will primarily capture teacher and student outcomes, while the qualitative data will describe the context of the model implementation and provide a deeper understanding of the quantitative results.

The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models, and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.

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.