The TXESS Revolution: A Teacher Professional Development Program to Advance Earth and Space Science in Texas

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) voted in 2006 to require a fourth year of science for graduation from high school and to authorize the creation of a new senior level, capstone Earth Systems and Space Science course as an option to fulfill that requirement. Here, we describe a new initiative, the Texas Earth and Space Science (TXESS) Revolution, a 5-year professional development program for 8th-12th grade minority and minority-serving science teachers and teacher mentors in Texas to help prepare them to teach the new capstone course.

At the heart of TXESS Revolution is an extraordinary partnership, involving two UT-Austin academic units (the Jackson School of Geosciences and the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering), TERC, the University of South Florida, and the Texas Regional Collaboratives for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching (TRC).

TXESS Revolution is providing teachers with access to high quality materials and instruction aligned with the Texas educational standards for the new capstone course through professional development academies; immersive summer institutes and field experiences; Earth Science by Design training; and an online learning forum. Based on our first year of professional development activities, "TXESS Revolution teachers are reaching 7969 students of which 597 (7.5%) are African American, 17 are Native American (0.2%), 92 are Asian American (1.2%), 1,870 are Caucasian (23.5%), 5371 (67.4%) are Hispanic, and 22 (0.3%) are other. More than half of these teachers are in schools with "high" or "very high" campus poverty levels." (NSF Project Annual Summary Report submitted April, 2008). We will present successes and challenges experienced as part of this professional development program.

TXESS Revolution is funded by The National Science Foundation's Opportunities to Enhance Diversity in the Geosciences program and the Jackson School of Geosciences. In addition, the TRC is providing matching funds for this project.