Improving Teacher Quality Grants in Science Education

Dr. Gouranga Saha

            Dr. Gouranga Saha, Associate Professor of Science Education wrote and received FOUR competitive Science Teacher Professional Grants for a total amount of $536,314.00.  First one was an Eisenhower grant that served elementary and middle school science teachers of Jefferson City School District during 2001 – 2002.  Other three  (Cycle 2, 3, & 4) grants administered by Missouri Department of Higher Education (MDHE) belong to “No Child Left Behind Title II, Part A Federal NCLB Act 2001.”  These three grants partnered with LU Department of Agriculture, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, UMSL and wide geographical areas of St. Louis Schools have been serving Science Teachers of St. Louis City.  Cycle 2 focused on ‘Force, Motion & Mechanical Energy’ for grades 9-12, and Cycle 3 on ‘Matter & Energy’ for grades 4-8 and Cycle 4 will concentrate on “Force & Motion” for grades 4-8 content areas. In Cycle 4 we will seek to find out the impact of Inquiry & Literacy on the participant teachers and their students’ conceptual understandings of science concepts. Many factors tied to teaching and learning science have been and will be studied during these projects.

Using a research-based “Best Practice” Professional Development Model developed by Dr. Saha (2001), all the grant projects have been organized into TWO Phases.  Phase-I is the Summer Workshop and Phase-II is the support-cum-implementation part.  Each day of summer includes two sessions – morning for hands-on activity & afternoon for reflection and consensus building via whiteboard technique.

During the support-cum-implementation phase (Phase-II) component I, each participant teacher’s classroom is visited twice by the grant team to observe, sometimes co-teach (particularly questioning strategies), mentor, reflect and video-tape his/her lesson on the target content to learn inquiry science teaching from each other’s elbow.  For component 2 each participant teacher’s video-taped lesson is evaluated and reflected upon, new ideas of teaching the lesson are suggested and content knowledge is reinforced.

Multifaceted measures from these grant projects have already demonstrated an increased teachers’ content knowledge and inquiry skills to use in his/her classroom that has also been translated into a pattern of higher student learning outcomes in science and their positive attitude towards the discipline.

           Data from the External Evaluation Report for MDHE Cycle 2 Teacher Quality Grant, published recently demonstrate that Lincoln Project made a significant positive impact on participant teachers’ and their students’ increased content knowledge and use of inquiry practices  in science. The report is available at: http://www.pdeval.missouri.edu/cycle_2.html