HR: 1340h
AN: ED13A-1202
TI: Bridging Communities: Culturing a Professional Learning Community that Supports Novice Teachers and Transfers Authentic Science and Mathematics to the Classroom
AU: * Herbert, B E
EM: herbert@geo.tamu.edu
AF: Texas A&M University, Department of Geology & Geophysics, College Station, TX 77843-3115 United States
AU: Miller, H R
EM: hsaggie@neo.tamu.edu
AF: Texas A&M University, Department of Geology & Geophysics, College Station, TX 77843-3115 United States
AU: Loving, C L
EM: cloving@tamu.edu
AF: Texas A&M University, Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, College Station, 77843-4232 United States
AU: Pedersen, S
EM: spedersen@tamu.edu
AF: Texas A&M University, Department of Educational Psychology, College Station, 77843- 4225 United States
AB: Professional Learning Community Model for Alternative Pathways (PLC-MAP) is a partnership of North Harris Montgomery Community Colleges, Texas A&M University, and 11 urban, suburban, and rural school districts in the Greater Houston area focused on developing a professional learning community that increases the retention and quality of middle and high school mathematics and science teachers who are being certified through the NHMCCD Alternative Certification Program. Improved quality in teaching refers to increased use of effective inquiry teaching strategies, including information technology where appropriate, that engage students to ask worthy scientific questions and to reason, judge, explain, defend, argue, reflect, revise, and/or disseminate findings. Novice teachers learning to adapt or designing authentic inquiry in their classrooms face two enormous problems. First, there are important issues surrounding the required knowledgebase, habit of mind, and pedagogical content knowledge of the teachers that impact the quality of their lesson plans and instructional sequences. Second, many ACP intern teachers teach under challenging conditions with limited resources, which impacts their ability to implement authentic inquiry in the classroom. Members of our professional learning community, including scientists, mathematicians and master teachers, supports novice teachers as they design lesson plans that engage their students in authentic inquiry. The purpose of this research was to determine factors that contribute to success or barriers that prevent ACP secondary science intern and induction year teachers from gaining knowledge and engaging in classroom inquiry as a result of an innovative professional development experience. A multi-case study design was used for this research. We adopted a two-tail design where cases from both extremes (good and poor gains) were deliberately chosen. Six science teachers were selected from a total of 40+ mathematics and science teachers. These six, on average, demonstrated either the highest gain in knowledge and/or engagement in inquiry-based teaching or the lowest gain among all the novice science teachers through the year of participation in the PLC-MAP program. Certain patterns emerged across all six cases, even when the other variables are acknowledged. The principal external factors were school climateÑits culture, its mandates, its degree of teacher autonomy. The internal factors were teacher beliefs about learning through inquiry, about their own need for additional knowledge, and about managing inquiry--all tied to degrees of self-efficacy.
UR: http://geoexplorer.tamu.edu/plcmap/
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0830 Teacher training
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2006 Fall Meeting