TEACHERS ENGAGED IN AUTHENTIC RESEARCH IN AN ONLINE MASTER OF EDUCATION PROGRAM: CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES

Since 2008, the Master of Education in Earth Sciences program at Penn State University has involved approximately 100 middle and high school science teachers from across the United States in research collaborations with scientists at Penn State and other institutions. The fruits of these collaborations have ranged from classroom lessons developed for the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science to NSF RET participation, to published primary research articles. The participating teachers have not only taken an active role in the research but have designed classroom-ready lessons and activities they have taught to their own students.

Here we discuss the challenges and successes of incorporating intensively advisor-led research projects into a professional master’s degree program aimed at mid-career K-12 teachers, emphasizing those we believe to be applicable to any scientist hoping to develop similar projects. Foremost, university scientists are largely unfamiliar with mentoring teachers (or any adult learners who are not planning to become researchers) in the process of doing science. Therefore, project design requires careful planning, as the background knowledge and quantitative skills of the participating teachers can vary considerably. It is important to strike a balance between manageable scope and likelihood of achieving worthwhile scientific results. Furthermore, PSU’s M.Ed. in Earth Sciences program is fully online--the teacher participants are all at a distance. We prevailed over this challenge largely through projects involving analysis of digital data, making them naturally suited for asynchronous electronic collaboration and communication, or finding funding for summer residential experiences at Penn State. The teachers who have graduated from our M.Ed. in Earth Sciences program have asserted that their experience not only enhanced their content knowledge but also gave them a true appreciation about “the way science really works,” and they continue to enthusiastically transmit this knowledge to their own students.