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Urban Science Education Center. Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Teachers College Columbia University. Mission.
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Urban Science Education Center Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Teachers College Columbia University
Mission • To build and sustain culturally relevant, socially just, and academically challenging science education experiences for students in high poverty New York City public middle schools. • To research and redesign urban science teacher education in order to better prepare teacher leaders in urban school systems, improve science teacher retention, and promote quality science teaching. • To foster empowering relationships between Teachers College Programs in Science Education, schools, community organizations and urban communities
Enacting our Mission • To establish rich understandings of urban youth and the multiple intersections between their lives and science • Science Toolkits • access to and activation of human, social and material resources • Funds of knowledge as strategic resources • Science practices as strategic activation of resources • relationship between resources activation and the location and design of the learning environment • The relationships between the scope and function of science toolkits and student engagement in science (meaning making, identity/voice, agency/participation) • To build a library of research-based resources about urban youth • Rich array of research-based materials that describe urban youth’s “science toolkits” • Offered in formats that teachers and curriculum developers can draw upon in building relevant, sustainable curricula and pedagogy: Written and digital cases, archived and cataloged digital assets (interview, classroom interactions, student work, etc.), working papers, publications
Enacting our Mission • To creating testable, scalable models for curricular adaptation and sustainability grounded a framework for social justice • Social Justice Framework • Anti-deficit perspective • Youth centered • Inquiry and standards-based • Urban centered scope and sequence • Curricular Adaptations and Sustainability • The design of Responsive Pedagogies that draw upon youth’s science toolkits • Locally grounded science problems and practice • Balancing academic science with science that is with and in the community • Creating an urban centered scope and sequence that is coordinated with city and state standards • Project/topic selection • Grounding in local resources accessible to urban schools
Enacting our Mission To design innovative approaches and tools to preparing preservice teachers to teach in urban settings (i.e., pedagogical toolkits). • Design of a new course sequence with an urban focus • Design on digital learning tools for use in preservice science education • PARENTS (Parents and researchers talking about science) • Science CUTS (Science cases about urban teachers and students) • Field work experiences • Summer internships involved in USEC activities
Urban Science Education Center • Professional Development • Workshop series: Summer institute, school year retreats, • Mini grants • Mentors and Study Teams • Urban Science Education Fellows Leadership Team Teachers College • Student Programs • After school programs and summer programs • In school science initiatives • Science role models and mentors Interns Partner Middle Schools • Transformative Action Research • Designing curricular adaptations/innovations • Designing responsive pedagogies embedded in curricular innovations • Understanding instructional and curricular advances on: student achievement, attitudes in science, and science trajectories • Understanding the role of professional development in: enhancing teacher’s science understandings and capacities to create empowering science instruction • Research and development of multimedia teacher learning tools focused on: student learning in science, parental engagement in science education Science and Community Partners STAR Teams
Transformative Research for Social Justice in Urban Settings Four tenets that frame transformative research: • Immediate and direct impact on classrooms • Cyclic and shared process of informed data collection, analysis, reflection, and application • Can take many different forms • Grounded in both the literature of best practices AND the needs of the classroom/community • Primary methods we use at USEC • Design experiments • Mixed methods case study • Large scale survey • City- and state-based achievement data
Collaborative possibilities -- Questions • What research interests do we have in common? How might our research agendas merge into a meaningful project located in NYC and/or Boston? • How does our approach to research and development inform development work at TERC (in a non summative evaluative manner) • What active projects currently in place at USEC or at TERC can be advanced with the research and development approaches taken by the two organizations? • Locations for development: • NYC/Boston • In school/out of school • Content areas/curricular initiatives