The
Geoscience Teacher Training (GEO-Teach) program was initiated in 2006
to address the need for highly qualified teachers in the
geosciences. This ambitious program aims to establish
transformative practices for providing high-quality professional
development and training to pre-service and in-service secondary
school earth system science teachers across the nation. Two
GEO-Teach projects were selected for National Science Foundation
support beginning in FY2007. The first project is a
collaboration between the University of New Hampshire (Karen Graham,
PI), Pennsylvania State University (Tanya Furman, PI), Dillard
University (Abdalla Darwish, PI) and Elizabeth City State University
(William Porter, PI). It will bolster existing University of New
Hampshire (UNH) teacher preparation programs through addition of
mentoring, networking, research experiences, and development of
inquiry-based classroom activities. Expansion of the UNH model
to satellite programs at the partner institutions will allow
investigation of the adaptability and exportability of the model to
other types of institutions, including those with diverse student
populations.
In
the second project, the Earth System Science Education Alliance
(ESSEA) (Robert Myers, PI, Institute for Global Environmental
Strategies) will provide 40 academic institutions with online earth
system science courses for in-service and pre-service teachers that
address their needs in the areas of geoscience content, technology,
educational resources, and new teaching methods. Participating
teachers will be immersed in a knowledge-building community in which
they conduct research, learn new content, expose their thinking to
critical analysis, and develop new classroom activities.
For
both projects, evaluation data will be used to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the model for teacher training and professional
development and its potential to be successfully scaled up,
institutionalized, and sustained at a larger number of institutions.
