PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS FOSTERING COMMUNITY AND HIGH SCHOOL GEOSCIENCE EFFICACY GUIDING STUDENTS TO STEM CAREERS

Guiding students into STEM careers is an ongoing process in High Schools nationwide. To support this process, High School teachers must be prepared to provide phenomena-based learning opportunities. This NSF GeoPaths project highlights a partnership between the local school district and university to address Geoscience teacher and student interest in local phenomena. We also attempt to build a geoscience education-oriented learning and teaching community. This professional development was carried out with fourteen High School Geoscience teachers who took part in a week-long professional development opportunity. The purpose of this study is to utilize the unique local landscape in Southern Nevada to build connections and community among secondary science teachers. The proposed four-prong program includes 1) Geoscience workshops and field trips for teachers. 2) Creation of high school earth science curriculum materials based on local geologic resources 3) Facilitating a service-learning course that will pair undergraduate ‘geoscience ambassadors’ with high school classes, and 4) engaging highly motivated high school students, high school teachers, and UNLV undergraduate students in engaging, locally relevant scientific research questions in a way that leverages cutting edge analytical equipment in the Geoscience Department. This presentation focused on parts 1 and 2, answering the research question: How does being a part of an education-focused geoscience community impact teachers’ teaching efficacy around local phenomena? To answer this question, teachers completed an efficacy survey (i.e. STEBI-A) pre- post- the professional development to which quantitative analysis was applied.

Preliminary results of a Wilcoxen ranked sign test (Woolson, 2007) for non-parametric measures indicated that the post-teacher efficacy scores improvement was statistically significant z= 21.5, p<.05 following participant workshop and field trip experiences. This significance indicates that the workshop supported teacher efficacy in leveraging the local landscape for geoscience instruction. This would be of interest to geoscience educators committed to increasing student interest in STEM education.

Woolson, R. F. (2007). Wilcoxon signed‐rank test. Wiley encyclopedia of clinical trials, 1-3.