Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership (ISEP) Targeted MSP
Description
Effective STEM teaching in a high needs urban school district is supported by increased content knowledge, gained from interdisciplinary research experiences and supported by enhanced learning communities, supported by wrap around college/university STEM faculty and students in classroom and after-school programs.Based on the models of Desimone (2009) and the NSFs Local Systematic Change (LSC) through Teacher Enhancement program in the 1990s (Banilower, Heck & Weiss, 2007), the conceptual framework informing our MSP is shown in Figure below. While there is a consensus on the critical features of effective science teacher professional development, much remains unknown about the mechanism through which these features interact to affect teachers knowledge and skills, which in turn affects student achievement. Particularly, the UB/BPS MSP focuses on interdisciplinary science inquiry. Research is needed to understand the processes and conditions in which science teachers develop interdisciplinary science inquiry knowledge, and how this knowledge may be translated into interdisciplinary pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) that ultimately improves student science learning.