THE ROLE OF THE COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN TRAINING K-8 TEACHERS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION

Geoscience departments in two-year colleges play a critical role in training K-12 teachers through the information presented and the instructional methods used in our classrooms. Approximately 40% of all K-12 teachers attend a two-year college for their introductory science courses, the only science courses taken by most future teachers. Many of these pre-service teachers elect to take geoscience courses as a part of degree requirements. Along with colleagues at Central Washington University (CWU) and local high school districts in suburban Seattle, we have established a pathway for students to complete an enriched science and math curriculum on their way to becoming certified K-8 teachers without leaving our community college (GRCC/CWU). Graduates of this program have been selected to be the science specialists at their schools during their first year of teaching. In addition, this program has tapped a pool of talented students who could not leave their families to attend a four-year institution in another city. Part of the requirements for this program is the completion of a three quarter series of science classes, called Interdisciplinary Science (IDS). This cohort-style sequence is predominately taught by a guided-inquiry approach by instructors from the geosciences, physics, chemistry, and biology. The curriculum in this series is centered on the topic of climate and global change and includes many geoscience modules. In a recent research study of second-year teachers who graduated from the CWU/GRCC program, we found that all 12 of the graduates we visited taught their primary school science classes using inquiry methods.