RESEARCH EXPERIENCES FOR LARGE NUMBERS OF MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS AND THEIR STUDENTS

Most university faculty understand that their research contributes an important element to their teaching. In recent years, it has become clear that Northern Colorado science teachers actively involved with university-based research projects are more likely to engage their own students in scientific research. Recognizing this trend, we set out to encourage more teachers to join research projects by providing a long-term ecological research experience for twenty-seven middle and high school teachers attending an annual summer workshop of the Environmental Literacy Math-Science Partnership Project. The summer workshop is followed by listserv networking and Saturday Institutes during the academic year. Groups of teachers were required to apply as a team to be a part of the workshop and propose a research project that could be integrated across many classes and subjects within their school. The summer workshop began with a pre-assessment field mapping exercise, a discussion of educational research in the area of learning progressions, and a suite of teaching strategies tied to the learning progression research we are conducting simultaneously. The teaching strategies focused on water, biodiversity, and carbon research that could easily be done in the short-term in or near a typical schoolyard. The second half of the workshop involved making a 3-D topographical model of our watershed and selecting four field sites within the watershed in alpine, sub-alpine, montane, and plains riparian life zones. The teachers were challenged to develop an overarching research question that was broad enough to incorporate all of the questions the individual teams set out to study, yet constrained enough to be practical. Teams were sent to select specific sites, map them, collect samples and take measurements, notes, and photographs. It is now their task to refine their research strategy and revisit the sites during different seasons, collect new samples, help analyze samples in the lab, and select guest professors to come and offer advice and content knowledge. Each team will be assisted by a Teacher-in-Residence and get a scientific poster of the larger project so they can model what they expect from their own students. Preliminary feedback reveals that teachers are craving to be a part of an authentic science project like this.