PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF INSTRUCTORS THROUGH PROFESSOR-TEACHER-BASED TEAM TEACHING IN EARTH-SCIENCE TEACHER PREPARATION COURSES

The Department of Geology and School of Education at Brooklyn College, with support from NSF-Geoscience Education, co-designed a new Master of Arts of Teaching program for the preparation of teachers of earth science in New York City. Effective teacher training requires instruction in state-mandated earth-science content integrated with best-practices in pedagogy. Pedagogical approaches must be suited to the classroom environments in which teachers will teach. Accordingly, all courses in our new MAT program were designed to use a team-teaching approach that pairs a content specialist (geoscience professor) with a pedagogy specialist (experienced earth science teacher). This team-teaching model was intended to meet the needs of course-participants, but we have found that scientist-teacher pairings have an additional benefit. This approach provides professional development for the course instructors. For the classroom teachers, team-teaching enabled them to deepen their knowledge of geology. It also provided a metacognitive opportunity for them to think about how they are teaching geology; “I’m teaching, but I am also learning about how they [students] are internalizing what I say. I can relate that to when I am teaching my students—if an adult does not understand what I am saying, then a 14-year-old will have more trouble.” Other classroom teachers cited a deepening and reinforcing of content knowledge. For the professors, the experience facilitated the realization of the breadth of content knowledge that teachers need depends on the grade-level taught. For example, elementary school teachers benefit more from multiple examples of core concepts. With the help of the collaborating teachers, one geology professor was able to develop grade appropriate projects and was able to assess them in the context of what that particular grade level teachers needs to know to be able to teach at a developmentally appropriate level. For example, prior to working with the teachers, the professor felt that some of the projects completed by the elementary-level students (teachers) showed evidence of only a minimal grasp of the subject, but being able to see it though the lens of the needs of an elementary classroom teacher, he was able to view and assess the projects as appropriate to their grade-level.