STEM-CS is a five-year federally funded EIR grant with the intention to increase teacher effectiveness in the classroom and increase student achievement in STEM fields. Teacher participants are from seven different GRREC school districts who serve rural communities. The high school cohort will begin project work in the first year of the grant with the middle school cohort joining in the third year. Project work will include completing the U.S. Satellite Laboratory’s Endeavor STEM Leadership program and then have the option of pursuing either a Master’s degree (to achieve dual-credit certification), Micro-credentials, or National Board Certification. Additionally, the grant will support professional learning opportunities that address understanding poverty, STEM curriculum development, using achievement data, establishing a STEM network, and increasing access to more STEM opportunities for students.
Karen Woodruff
Director
Welcome! My name is Karen Woodruff. I represent U.S. Satellite Laboratory and Endeavor STEM Teaching Certificate Project, the STEM coursework partner on the STEM-CS grant. Working collaboratively, with the Green River Regional Education Cooperative, we offered a program of study for teachers to advance their STEM content and practices. The outcomes are remarkable. Educators were able to think deeply about integrating STEM in a community of practice that provided support and guidance along the way.
As you watch the video, we encourage you to consider the following ideas and respond in the discussion space below:
1) Who is engaged in STEM professional learning that meets educators need and how can you network with them to create meaningful programs?
2) Do you know what teachers in your local region value as "high quality PD?"
3) How are teachers connecting STEM learning to local cultural assets in your community?
4) What did you see teachers doing in the video that might prompt you to ask more questions about this program? We'd love to talk more about their work with you.
Nancy Songer
Dean
Hello, STEM-CS! Thank you for sharing your engaging video. I really enjoyed the creativity in your video that included interview excerpts, short clips of students doing activities, and even a bit of animation. The focus on resources to help teachers think deeply about integrated STEM topics in a community of practice appears to be an impactful approach, as expressed by the teachers themselves in the video.
My questions are related to impact, as I think it is always wonderful to have as many different kinds of information about impact as possible to help us both understand our programs and to use for revision and improvement of programs.
My questions are these:
What kinds of data or information are you collecting to determine the impact of these courses? Are you gathering both self-report and implementation information information, (in other words information at multiple points to determine both intention/self-reflection and evidence of practices or activities enacted that are manifestations of the ideas in the courses)?
Thanks for sharing!
Dale Goatley
Green River Regional Educational Cooperative
Great questions, Nancy. Please review my responses below.
What kinds of data or information are you collecting to determine the impact of these courses?
For programmatic measures of of impact, STEM-CS will look in-depth at participating high school and middle school state assessment data, and gather student achievement data in current STEM classes. We will analyze how information is currently disseminated and examine effectiveness. STEM-CS has contracted with a third-party evaluator to conduct a comparison study between participating districts’ STEM classes and a control group of non-treatment schools to determine what is effective, and what is not. In partnership with grant school stakeholders, our project will also examine data-driven decision-making (at the school level) to change practice for continuous improvement.
Are you gathering both self-report and implementation information information, (in other words information at multiple points to determine both intention/self-reflection and evidence of practices or activities enacted that are manifestations of the ideas in the courses)?
STEM-CS program staff met with Cohort 1 (high school teacher participants) to gather preliminary data/information specific to them. Sources include: a survey of certifications, content-specific STEMCS PD they have received since they began teaching (if any), and an assessment of individual teacher effectiveness in STEMCS, personal teacher surveys regarding self-efficacy to teach STEM, student surveys, and fellow-educator/building leader surveys. Each fall, we collect another cycle of data to determine any trends. Cohort 2 (middle school teacher participants) recently joined our project in the Fall of 2021 and they will go through the same data collection cycle like Cohort 1.
I hope this helps!
Dale Goatley
Green River Regional Educational Cooperative
Hello and welcome STEM friends! My name is Dale Goatley. I represent the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative (GRREC). GRREC is a regional educational service agency that provides professional learning services to 45 school districts in southcentral Kentucky. GRREC is one of the eight cooperatives serving educators in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. In October of 2019, GRREC was awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program for "Project STEM-Computer Science". I serve as the STEM-CS Coordinator. STEM-CS is a five-year project serving 50 educators across 12 rural districts with high student poverty rates. We intend to increase participating educator's expertise in STEM education and instate more opportunities and access to STEM learning experiences for ALL students. The work of STEM-CS is to support teachers as they redesign a rigorous STEM curriculum, create/sponsor student clubs related to STEM such as robotics, Lego Leagues, coding, etc., and empower grant participants to collaborate and share STEM learning with their colleagues across their respective schools. STEM learning can take place in ANY setting, not only in science and mathematics classrooms! In addition to educators of STEM disciplines, STEM-CS proudly includes educators of Reading/Language Arts and Library Media in our program!
One of our essential partners in this project is the U.S. Satellite Laboratory and Endeavor STEM Teaching Certificate Project. All STEM-CS grant participants complete Endeavor's STEM Leadership Certificate Program as professional learning to build their expertise in STEM education. The STEM-CS Project covers tuition and fees for each Endeavor course and additional professional development. My role as the STEM-CS Coordinator is supporting teachers with implementing STEM learning in their classrooms and providing on-going coaching to sustain the work of the STEM-CS project. STEM-CS has founded several professional networks including Digital Design Lab and STELLAR (STEM Teachers Engaging in Learning, Leadership, and Action Research). Both networks support ANY educator across the Commonwealth of Kentucky! Please reference Karen Woodruff’s guiding questions above and comment below; we would love to take your questions and read your feedback!
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
I really like the focus on helping teachers learn how to engage students in analyzing authentic datasets. Could you say more about the types of data being analyzed? I am also wondering about the decision to begin with secondary school teachers, and then add middle school teachers later. Could you share your reasoning about that? Thanks
Dale Goatley
Green River Regional Educational Cooperative
Hi David, thank you for your questions. See my responses below:
Could you say more about the types of data being analyzed?
For measuring programmatic impact (summative):
CEPR at Indiana University will conduct an independent evaluation of STEMCS that addresses key research questions about the impact of the project on students’ academic proficiency in mathematics and science, and evaluates the quality and fidelity of program implementation. The CEPR research team has extensive experience conducting field tests of innovative educational interventions (e.g., Race to the Top initiatives), as well as conducting randomized controlled trial studies (RCT), and quasi-experimental design (QED) studies that produce rigorous evidence of the effectiveness and impact of education interventions. CEPR will compare the science and mathematics proficiency of students in rural HS and MS that are implementing STEMCS with a carefully matched sample of similar rural schools.
RQ1. What is the impact of STEMCS on student academic proficiency in science and mathematics?
RQ2. To what extent, if any, does impact vary by student gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status?
Matches will be determined using propensity score-matching techniques, and CEPR will identify four comparison schools for each school in the treatment group. In the event that the propensity score matching does not result in baseline equivalence on predictor variables, propensity weighting will be used to ensure baseline equivalence. CEPR will use a Comparative Interrupted Time Series (CITS) analyses to examine changes in treatment schools’ performance using student-level outcomes, and when STEMCS is implemented in each treatment school. These changes in treatment schools will be statistically compared against observed changes for the carefully matched comparison set of schools. CITS takes advantage of having multiple years of achievement data before and after the implementation of STEMCS. Design replication studies have demonstrated that CITS perform well in replicating impact estimates from randomized controlled trials.
For programmatic fidelity measures, formative assessment, and programmatic outputs:
Sources include: a survey of certifications, content-specific STEMCS PD they have received since they began teaching (if any), and an assessment of individual teacher effectiveness in STEMCS, personal teacher surveys regarding self-efficacy to teach STEM, student surveys, and fellow-educator/building leader surveys.
I am also wondering about the decision to begin with secondary school teachers, and then add middle school teachers later. Could you share your reasoning about that?
GRREC wished to include the high school cohort first so we could provide the longest stint of STEM/Computer Science professional learning support to this demographic of teachers. Upper secondary professional learning isn't offered as frequently in comparison to professional learning for middle, elementary, and early childhood settings (speaking for my local region only).
I hope this addresses your questions!
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
Thanks Dale, very helpful. I was actually wondering about the datasets students would be analyzing, but your response was very helpful in understanding your research approach. Your rationale for beginning with secondary school teachers dmakes sense given the professional developmental issues.
Dale Goatley
Green River Regional Educational Cooperative
Apologies, David! Yes - through the Endeavor Program my STEMCS grant teachers have been connected with so many authentic datasets associated with NASA and NOAA. The Endeavor Program equipped our teachers not just with datasets to reference but how integrate them into the classroom meaningfully through project-based learning experiences or thinking routines (i.e. data talks).
Here are a few datasets used by STEM-CS teachers in their respective classrooms:
https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/
http://datanuggets.org/search-current-data-nugg...
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tracking_charts.shtml
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-tem...
https://data.nasa.gov/
Karen Woodruff may wish to speak more to this!
Karen Woodruff
Director
Thanks Dale...Great question David. Each of the courses includes a specific integrated STEM focus and includes data sets from NASA, NOAA, etc. used to make authentic connections between research and exploration happening beyond the classroom and the learning that takes place within classrooms. I'll give you a few examples:
1) Chemistry in the STEM Classroom. Educators use results of the CheMin Instrument aboard Curiosity rover to make connections between the mineral composition on Mars and Earth. They explore the sampling techniques (xray difraction) and use the data to have students draw conclusions about past geologic activity on Mars.
2) Methods of STEM Education. Last semester we hosted a scientist from NASA JPL who spoke about the Clipper mission to Europa, which has a icy outer layer. Educators made connections to how water behaves on Earth. Elementary teachers, teaching about the phases of water, used Europa as an additional example of the unique properties of water. This is a very exciting mission as Europa potentially has the ingredients that we know make life on Earth possible.
3) Climate Science: Socioscientific Issues in the STEM Classroom. There is so much amazing data available to teachers in this course. One example that is very accessible to teachers and students is nasa.climate.gov. Educators use data from various missions - GRACE-FO, Aqua, CloudSat, ICESat-2, OCO-2, Landsat, and others to study the changing climate. The NASA Climate site makes the information accessible for teachers and students.
I hope these examples help give you an idea of how we integrate data analysis in our courses to support deep understanding for teachers and students. It's a central focus of the program. Thanks for the great question.
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
Thanks for the examples, Karen. Very helpful.
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
Very helpful, Dale; thanks. No apologies needed, your response helped me understand more fully the focus of your research!
Jessica Parker
Senior Director
Thanks so much STEM-CS for sharing this video about how you are supporting STEM effectiveness for rural KY teachers. Since you are only halfway through your project so far, I was wondering if you could share any preliminary findings related to your project, potentially a success you have experienced and also a challenge as well. Thanks!
Jessica Parker
Dale Goatley
Green River Regional Educational Cooperative
Thank you for your question, Jessica.
Our project’s external evaluators will be prepared to conduct a thorough analysis of student achievement data when Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 complete their respective focused intervention period. Cohort 1's impact analysis will begin September 30th, 2022.
However, in addition to student achievement data, we are analyzing teacher efficacy and attitudes toward STEM using pre/post survey results. The tool our evaluators selected to ensure reliability and validity is “Teacher Efficacy and Attitudes Toward STEM Survey- Science Teachers” from the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. I would like to share our initial findings below for both cohorts.
Cohort 1 (High School Teachers count: 23)
Cohort 2 (Middle School Teachers count: 32)
Our grant project began in December of 2019, so as you can imagine, the pandemic was just on the cusp. Attrition has been an obstacle. Cohort 1 initially began with 23 participants, and over the spring and fall of 2020, our participant count dwindled down to 16. Each grant teacher was required to participate in select trainings and required to complete the Endeavor coursework. Personal and professional implications, due to the impact from COVID-19, caused a great deal of stress and hardship on nearly all of the participants who withdrew. Tragically, one participant of Cohort 1 passed away due to illness. Recruitment for Cohort 2 began in the spring of 2021. At that time, life (and school life) was beginning to normalize again and has continued to do so. Fortunately, our program has nearly all Cohort 2 participants active one year later.
Jessica Parker
Senior Director
Thanks so much for sharing your preliminary findings! I appreciate it. You have great baseline data and I hope that your cohorts and the project can gather momentum after going through so much with COVID-19. Best of luck!
Jennifer LaBombard-Daniels
Love the dynamics of your project and how it seems that you are working with teachers not just in science but through various avenues. Love the real world applications you are providing. It sounds like the high school version of our EIR grant. My question is how are you connecting your students/teachers with the younger students in your division that will feed into your high school?