Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: The University of Arkansas Science Partnership Program began in 2006 and focuses on the professional growth of 6 th , 7 th and 8 th grade science teachers through three summer institutes and follow-up activities.Teachers are teamed with engineering faculty to improve teaching skills and to increase teachers' use, understanding and application of laboratory exercises.The Partnership Program consists of three parts: 1) instruction at the institutes using a number of hands-on activities that will be used in the classroom; 2) follow-up activities at the middle and junior high schools and; 3) evaluation, both during and after the summer institutes.In evaluating Year 1 of the program, several important lessons were learned: • Arkansas Science Curriculum Frameworks are structured with minimal overlap from grade to grade, making it difficult to structure activities that fit equally well in each middle school grade levels.• Despite the imperative to directly align experiments with the Curriculum Frameworks, teachers and students thoroughly enjoyed experiments with an engineering theme.• None of the teachers used all (or a majority) of the experiments from the Year 1 institute.• Some teachers requested the complexity of the lab activities be increased for specific subject areas and for specific grade levels.• The level of participation in the follow-up activities and the amount of provided materials used in the classroom as a direct result of the institute suggested that many teachers did not play a large enough role in the development of the activities and experiments used.The impact of these lessons on the content and organization of the summer institute will be the focus of Year 2. The Year 2 Institute will teach the participants to design their own experiments using a backward design teaching method, emphasizing results-driven outcomes.The philosophy of this approach focuses on three components: 1) a clear set of desired results by identifying goals for students, identifying the specific information students will understand and what students would be able to do as a result of the learning activity; 2) identification of assessment evidence, allowing teachers to develop performance tasks to evaluate student results; and, 3) creating a learning plan that includes activities for students, enabling them to achieve the desired results.This approach allows us to address the lessons learned in Year 1, because the approach will work regardless of the framework standard or grade level.This approach also allows teachers to use "Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education"2 engineering problem-solving techniques as experiments, which they preferred most during the Year 1 Institute.If the teachers learn to design an activity, they will be more likely to use it in the classroom.The approach allows teachers to determine the level of experiment complexity to best fit their grade level.Last, this approach forces the teachers to take ownership of the created experiments so they will be more interested in follow-up activities and in utilizing such approaches in their classroom.
Source: ASEE Midwest Section Conference
Institution: University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4407677935