Professional Development

Spatial literacy is a new frontier in K-12 education. This article describes a place-based introductory GIS/GPS middle school curriculum unit in which students used measuring tools, GPS units, and My World GIS software to collect physical and spatial data of trees to create a schoolyard tree inventory. Maine students completed "memory maps" of their schoolyards as a pre/post exercise assessment. A statistically significant increase in students' spatial awareness was documented.

Preparing Tomorrow's STEM Workforce through Exploration, Equity, and Engagement is a product of the previous ITEST Learning Resource Center (LRC) and includes a series of six articles (plus a preface) highlighting key themes and lessons learned in the first five years of the ITEST program.

EcoScienceWorks (ESW) is an ecology curriculum that includes targeted simulations and a code block programming challenge developed through an NSF-ITEST grant.

The Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) is a 42-item questionnaire which uses a 5-point Likert scale measuring students' experience of science or math instruction.  Students are asked a variety of questions measuring Personal Relevance, Critical Voice, Shared Control, Uncertainy, Student Negotiation, Commitment, and Teacher Support.  The Personal Relevance scale is concerned with the connectedness of school science to students' out-of-school experiences.

The Inventory of Teaching and Learning Survey (ITAL) was created to measure intent to persist, confidence in learning, attitudes towards success, perceived usefulness of knowledge and motivation to succeed in a STEM domain. This instrument was developed to reflect core observation and assessment concepts reflect in the Reform Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) (Sawada, Pibum, Turly, Falconer, Benford, & Judson).

The Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) was developed as an observation instrument to provide a standardized means for detecting the degree to which K-20 classroom instruction in mathematics or science is reformed.  RTOP consists of 25 items, each using a 5-point Likert scale.  These 25 items are divided equally into 5 categories: Lesson Design and Implementation, Content: Propositional Pedagogic Knowledge, Content: Procedural Pedagogic Knowledge, Classroom Culture: Communicative Interactions, and Classroom Culture: Student/teacher Relationships.

The Science Teacher Inquiry Rubric (STIR) was developed based upon the National Science Education Standards essential features of inquiry instruction. This instrument was developed to serve as a self-assessment tool for elementary school teachers to understand how they implement the essential features of inquiry into their classroom instruction.

The links and attachments provide access to the STIR and its documentation.

Presenters: Steven Moore, CoastLines; CoastLines participants

This ITEST research study examined over 50 ITEST teacher professional development projects to better understand their role in teacher implementation of STEM workplace technologies.