There is growing enthusiasm for STEAM education in preparing students for an increasingly complex world. However, implementing STEAM in the classroom can be challenging for educators, as it may require collaboration across disciplines, increased workload, and understanding the nature of STEAM integration. This paper details a mixed-methods evaluation of a year-long STEAM teacher training program, in which a STEM teacher and an arts teacher collaborated to design and implement integrated STEAM lessons at each of the nine participating schools (n = 17). The training program consisted of a 5-week summer professional development experience, followed by ongoing financial, material, and pedagogical support during the school year, made possible by the partnership of the schools, a university, and community organizations. Findings from surveys, focus groups, and written reflections suggest that, despite certain challenges, aspects of the training program supported teacher implementation of STEAM. Participation in the program impacted teachers’ collaboration, pedagogy, self-efficacy, and arts integration practices. The findings offer insight into the forms of support that teachers deem important in STEAM teacher training programs and the benefits of such a program for teachers’ professional development.
As interest increases in promoting STEM education in America, summer STEM programs are a promising option for increasing student engagement, interest, and knowledge of STEM. However, STEM programs pose challenges for evaluation, especially programs that serve a large number of students and address a wide range of STEM topics. This paper describes how a team of researchers and practitioners collaborated to design and implement an evaluation of a series of STEM summer programs held at a large, public university. The programs varied in the STEM topics they covered and the age of participants. This created challenges for evaluating a series of programs of such scope and variety. This paper will further describe the programs and the methods used to evaluate them. Illustrative results of the evaluation will be shared, in addition to lessons learned from our evaluation in the hopes that this paper can serve as a resource for those looking for a feasible way to evaluate large, diverse programs.
The GoSTEAM program promotes authentic integration of the arts into PreK-12 computer science, engineering, and invention instruction. STEM and arts teachers come together to form STEAM Innovation Teams in collaboration with university-based coaches and creative Innovators-in-Residence. Starting with a STEAM professional development summer institute and continuing throughout the year, the teams come together to design and implement novel STEAM lessons and initiatives in their schools that integrate learning goals from both the STEM and the art disciplines. This type of transdisciplinary collaboration between colleagues from vastly different fields is new to most teachers and presents unique challenges. A primary goal of the GoSTEAM professional development is therefore to create safe, interdisciplinary spaces where meaningful, cross-disciplinary collaborations can occur. In 2019, this was accomplished through an intensive, 120hour face-to-face summer professional institute that incorporated many community building activities and collaborative planning sessions. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the summer institute changed to an online format and faced the challenge of providing teachers with a personally meaningful STEAM experience during a summer of crisis. Results show that the 2020 institute successfully supported the teachers, energized them, and provided them with tools to augment their virtual instruction. This paper describes the program adaptations due to COVID-19.
The purpose of our Noyce Track 4 research, funded in 2016, was to conduct an exploratory study investigating Noyce early career teachers’ retention in high-need schools. A sequential explanatory mixed-method design was used to investigate personal networks, teaching self-efficacy, and retention among a convenience sample of early career Noyce teachers from across the nation. The quantitative component of this study was guided by social network analysis (SNA). Based on network and graph theories, SNA is a method used to investigate and interpret patterns of social ties among network individuals. Additionally, a previously validated instrument and open-ended survey items were used to measure teaching self-efficacy. Following the survey, we conducted interviews with purposively selected teachers to follow-up on their experiences related to teaching self-efficacy, retention, and their Noyce programs. Our results showed that teachers who have more connected networks are more likely to remain in high-need schools. Additionally, our study identified a set of nine characteristics of Noyce programs that were positively correlated with retention. This indicates that when a teacher was exposed to these program characteristics, there was an overall increase in the likelihood that they would remain in a high-need school. Although self-efficacy was not significantly correlated with retention, we did find correlations between teaching self-efficacy and several Noyce program characteristics. The study carries implications for educational research spanning multiple areas including SNA, teacher education, and teacher self-efficacy. This study provides novel findings documenting the nuanced ways in which the social networks of Noyce program participants and various aspects of Noyce programs themselves may influence retention among early-career teachers in high-need schools. Additionally, our results show the importance of expanding teachers’ networks and the significance of receiving unique types of support from the various people within teachers’ networks.
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