ARCGIS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH EXAMINING YOUR ENVIRONMENT THROUGH THE POWER OF DATA (EYEPOD) AT NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY: TEACHER IMPLEMENTATION AND BARRIERS

The assumption is that teachers participate in professional development to better their teaching and to gain new knowledge and skills that they can then transfer directly to the classroom (Mizell, 2010). In June 2011, 15 teachers participated in the 5-day Examining Your Environment through the Power of Data (EYEPOD) Basics professional development workshop held at the Geospatial Research and Information Laboratory (GRAIL) on the Northern Arizona University campus. The EYEPOD Basics professional development was designed to instruct junior high and high school teachers on how to use ArcGIS and to provide them with the tools needed to implement the technology into their curriculum. Once the participants completed the one week EYEPOD Basics workshop, they were asked to incorporate what they did into their own classroom within the next academic year. Because of this expectation, EYEPOD was designed specifically with lessons, modules, and projects that could be taken straight to the classroom with relative ease.

Claesgens et al. (2013) suggested that having year-long interactions and possible incentives would have an effect on a teacher’s accountability after professional development; however, the EYEPOD Basics 2011 group does not support this argument. Expectations for participants were outlined, teachers were provided stipends for specific completed tasks and year round support via e-mail was available. Even with these tools, implementation within the actual classroom was lower than expected. Eight of the 15 participants did not implement and/or turn in student work for scoring, while the remaining seven implemented at varying levels.

Based on the previous EYEPOD research and the 2011 EYEPOD group four distinct barriers that hinder implementation following professional development, (1) technology (2) accountability following professional development (3) time constraints and (4) fitting the design criteria into their curriculum.

EYEPOD is funded by the National Science Foundation.