The program team operating an NSF Noyce Master Teacher program has been building a conceptual framework for developing teacher leaders. The program has focused its efforts on a group of 16 chemistry and physics teachers in Southeast high‐needs schools. The conceptual framework is based on the view that teacher leaders are those individuals who retain a classroom presence, while simultaneously innovating practice and empowering others. A core principle of the framework is that embodying these attributes requires an ability to see oneself and the teaching practice in a way that goes beyond the expertise associated with content and pedagogical knowledge. Evidence drawn from years three and four of the NSF Noyce Master Teacher program are presented to demonstrate the participating teachers’ understanding of the framework's components. These data also indicate the potential of the teachers to use the framework's principles to engage in leadership activity. Characterizing such understanding and the changes in it are foundational to determining the way such a framework influences teachers’ approaches to leadership. This paper has implications for the growing number of teacher leader initiatives across the United States, and for the question of whether science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teacher leadership should be considered separately from a general notion of teacher leadership.
A diverse and highly qualified chemistry teaching workforce is critical for preparing equally diverse, qualified STEM professionals. Here, we analyze National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) data to provide a demographic comparison of the U.S. secondary chemistry teaching population in high-needs and non-high-needs public schools as well as private schools during the 2011–2012 academic year. Our analysis reveals that the chemistry teaching workforce is predominantly white and significantly lacks in-field degrees or certification across school types, though high-needs and private schools are most affected by this lack of teacher qualification. Given these results, we attempt to retrosynthetically identify the pathway yielding a qualified chemistry teaching workforce to draw attention to the various steps in this scheme where reform efforts on the part of individual faculty, academic institutions, and organizations can be concentrated.
In January 2005 the first nanotechnology-based drug was approved by the FDA. Called Abraxane, it will be used in the battle against breast cancer. It works by encapsulating the chemotherapeutic agent paclitaxel in a shell of the protein albumin. The cancer cells are tricked by the albumin coating into taking in the nanospheres containing the cancer-fighting chemical. Much money and effort has been invested throughout the United States and the rest of the world into nanotechnology research, and a fair portion of that has gone into medically related applications. There are sure to be many nanotechnology-based pharmaceuticals to follow Abraxane in the next few years. It seems of paramount importance to make the next generation of citizens and, potential medical and scientific researchers, aware of the progress of such developments so that they can be make informed decisions about the utility of these products or, perhaps, be the creators of the next breakthrough. This article discusses a design approach to creating nanotechnology-related curricular materials through the construction of activity sets based on the FERA learning-cycle model. While a general discussion of the rationale and philosophy for this approach provides the foundation for the article, the ideas presented are grounded in the overview of a specific example of the approach in action. The specific example involves an activity set that focuses on building up traditional concepts of Arrhenius acid–base theory and weak versus strong acids and bases and then extends (applies) those ideas into a consideration of nanoencapsulation. This extension allows teachers to introduce students to some alternative methods of cancer treatment (to radiation and standard chemotherapy) such as nanoreactors and gold nanoshells.
In the past three decades, researchers have noted the limitations of a problem-solving approach that overemphasizes algorithms and quantitation and neglects student misconceptions and an otherwise qualitative, conceptual understanding of chemical phenomena. Since then, studies and lessons designed to improve student understanding of chemistry has overwhelmingly targeted introductory level, high school and first-year college students. In this article, we present a model-based learning cycle approach with upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students that investigated their ability to model the adiabatic and isothermal compression/expansion of a gas in a syringe. We were interested to observe, given the extent of their previous chemistry coursework, how students struggled to connect macroscopic observations with particulate representations. Analysis of laboratory reports, reflective journal entries, and classroom discourse transcripts indicate the learning experience was efficacious in uncovering and addressing student conceptual challenges with using models appropriately to describe gas behaviour under the experimental conditions for this investigation.
Inquiry has been advocated as an effective pedagogical strategy for promoting deep conceptual understanding and more sophisticated scientific thinking by numerous bodies associated with chemistry (and science) education. To allow inquiry to achieve these goals, the teacher must manage the amount of cognitive load experienced by students while they engage in inquiry activities. This article can help teachers address that challenge by discussing the notion of framing (a form of scaffolding) and by presenting a model designed to help teachers more effectively frame inquiry activities. Using the metaphor of a picture frame, the model introduces five components of the framing process that can be employed by teachers as guidelines for developing the background information they will share with students prior to an inquiry activity. Those components are context, goals, actions, tools, and interactions. Providing students with such a carefully developed background can better orient them to the purpose of the inquiry activity, put boundaries on the problem space they will be exploring, and reduce the cognitive load as they engage in the activity, all of which should improve the inquiry learning experience.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.