Establishing new pathways and partnerships in STEM teacher education

The project aims to serve the national need for high-quality middle and high school STEM teachers to address educational and inspiration gaps, especially for students in rural, lower-income, and minority-focused and other high needs schools, where access to qualified STEM teachers is limited. The project will establish a collaborative effort to explore opportunities, barriers, and pathways for talented community college students in STEM to transfer to a 4-year university’s teaching preparation program, for STEM majors to seek licensure in education, and to expand the network of high-needs schools where STEM student teachers would be trained and hired. This proposed work at the University of Kansas (KU) will leverage existing partnerships with high schools in the Kansas City and Shawnee Mission public school districts in Kansas, both of which are high-need districts, while seeking to develop new partnerships with the Johnson County and Kansas City Kansas community colleges as well as nearby institutions serving candidates who are military-affiliated and/or from Native American nations. Project goals include 1) producing a clearly articulated set of needs and expectations for a successful teacher scholarship program at KU; 2) identifying pathways for students starting at local community colleges to complete the STEM teacher preparation program at KU; 3) developing improvements in KU’s existing STEM teacher preparation program; and 4) generating agreements in support of placements for future teacher scholarship program graduates. This will be achieved by seeking input from students, staff, faculty, and administrators at KU, regional higher education institutions and high-needs schools. This project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.