Science in School: Transforming K-12 Outreach through Scientist Teacher Partnerships

Abstract

The Scientist in Every Florida School (SEFS) program was started in 2019 with a long-term vision to connect Earth systems scientists with public K-12 schools in Florida and therefore create long-term scientist-teacher partnerships. SEFS fulfills personalized requests to create meaningful and impactful interactions to support teacher pedagogy and student learning. We have as part of our mission a focus on mainstream public schools, and in particular, those that are Title I. We also are committed to working with at-risk teachers. The major components of our program include the scientist-teacher partnerships, focused professional development workshops on Florida's Earth systems (air, water, land, and life), classroom visits, and other web-based activities. Although still only in its first few years, the project and its more than 600 scientists have a wide reach with over 850 teachers and 53,000 students participating in our programs, which were delivered virtually in the 2020-2021 school year covering about 60% of Florida's 67 counties. In this article, we describe our programmatic features as well as recommendations for those who could implement similar programs.

Rocks Really Rock: Generating positive impacts in middle and high school students’ attitudes toward geology via Web Google-Earth electronic field trips

“…Science organizations and K-12 science educators believe that there is a need for scientists to be involved in science education (GSA Position Statement-Promoting Earth Science Literacy for Public Decision Making, 2013; King, 2013;Levine et al, 2007). Currently, several ES K-12 outreach strategies for students and teachers focus on inperson visits from professional scientists, visits to science fairs, visits to science museums, and field trips (Abramowitz et al, 2021;Onstad, 2021;Tillinghast et al, 2019). However, many of these outreach strategies have limitations, including lack of funding for in-person visits, time-consuming transportation, or accessibility.…”

Scientists benefit greatly from K-12 partnerships: the Panama Research Experiences for Teachers project

“…Likewise, the classic concept of scientistteacher PD representing primarily an expert-novice learner model with a unidirectional flow of information and expertise is outmoded and has given way to nonhierarchical collaboration (Fig. 3; MacFadden 2019; Abramowitz et al 2021). Johnson (2017) rightly refers to this process as a community of practice (e.g., Wenger et al 2002), a well-known concept in learning communities and one in which there is a shared purpose and active interest in a particular topic among all stakeholders.…”