ILETES: Informal Learning Environments and Teacher Educa9on for STEM Early Career Research Award AISL#1254075 Jennifer D. Adams, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY OVERVIEW This Early CAREER project is an integrated research and educaon project that OVERARCHING THEMES focuses on formal/informal collaboraons and ac8vi8es for STEM teacher educaon. This poster presents a) quan8tave survey findings based on ini8al • Teachers appropriated different aspects of informal science learning and theore8cal framework and b) emerging qualitave findings of 1.5 years of an enacted them in their teaching in ways that they saw best met their ongoing dialogue between a group of new teachers who engaged in dialogues and • Aims for “learning to be students’ needs as learners and resonated with their iden88es as shared teaching ar8facts in relaon to classroom science teaching and learning • Informal science learning spontaneous…[for] students to find that the educators. and informal science learning and expanded framework on teacher learning and means creang a space where students could engage in work is interes8ng and • The defini8ons of F, IF, and NF, as they play out in the lives of teachers iden8ty. The central ques8ons that guide the laer are 1) how do teachers define science learning in different want to learn more… ways and at their own pace ini8ate their own learning do not fall neatly into matrix of learner objec8ve and approach, but informal science educaon and 2) how do they enact their defini8ons in their it is hard to accomplish in • Methodological; he carefully rather converge and overlap in salient ways. teaching prac8ce? First the defini8ons of formal, informal, nonformal learning are thinks about what he wants to the classroom but it is what you should do… accomplish and plans revisited, then using a framework of iden8ty, agency, and learning to teach [creang] lifelong • Teachers developed iden88es and corresponding agencies that related accordingly how he will afford ORCHESTRATOR STRIVER learners.” teachers’ experiences were restoried into narraves that describe how teachers his students self-direc8on and to how they defined, adapted, and used ISE resources in their defined and adapted informal science learning in their classrooms and used their choice within the constraints of • Strived to be “more an assessment-based informal” through hands classrooms. no8ons of ISE to create equitable learning experiences for their students. curriculum. on ac8vi8es and student choice. • Common themes across teachers were: PHASE 1 QUANTITATIVE DATA • Hands-on ac8vi8es 69 K-12 teachers who currently teach in a large urban and are alumni from two • Self-directed learning university-based formal/informal programs for teacher educaon. Forty-three • Field trips (62%) female and 26 (38%) male; ages span 6 decades with 60% 21 and 35 y.o.; • Problem-based learning 83% (n=57) have post graduate degrees varied content areas. Instruments The WORKFORCE self-administered ques8onnaire used for the analyses was the Informal Learning • Views science as a way of ADVOCATE • ISE as a way to get technical • Advocacy for meaningful science expanding their experiences; DEVELOPER experience in an vocaonal- Environment Survey, v.1 (Adams, O’Connor-Petruso & Miele, 2015). This survey adding enrichment to the oriented school; focused on • ISE as a way of expanding students’ experiences with instrument was pilot tested and has a strong Cronbach's alpha reliability standardized subjects. workforce development science coefficient of .955. The survey consists of 60 ques8ons and is divided into five • Advocates for meaningful • Described hands-on ac8vi8es in learning; resists administrave relaon to work-related skills • Novelty and creavity in teaching enactments parts: Part I) Demographics, Part II) Programs, Part III) Frequencies (which constraints • “Informal” also related to the • However, the degree to which teachers enacted these aspects and the measure the teacher’s “behaviors and prac8ces”), Part IV) Atude (which • Meaningful learning equals spontaneous and unexpected hands on ac8vi8es and field trips learning experiences in the learning experiences created based on these no8ons presented very measure the “teacher’s percep8ons of courses that were beneficial and classroom mo8vang”), Part V) Teacher Iden8ty (which again measures the teacher’s differently depending on the “kind” of teacher—the role that the “beliefs”), Part V) Mo8vaon, and Part VI) Open-Ended Ques8on. Procedure: All teachers viewed themselves in relaon to their students. par8cipants were asked to take the online survey located at hIp:// globalskillsstudies.org. Data were collected over a five-week period. Analysis The research data were analyzed using IBM's PASW (Predic8ve Analy8cs SoSware), v. 22. Descrip8ve stas8cs and correlaons were run to ascertain frequencies and Figure 1: “Archetypes” of ISL Teacher Iden88es. Not meant to essen8alize but to describe the different ways teachers present themselves in SUMMARY linkages. Results are reported as well as paerns among teacher iden8ty relaon to ISL in the classroom. • In order to help all learners achieve science literacy, it is important to variables. teach teachers how to create equitable learning environments in their Quan9ta9ve Results: Paerns in the survey responses indicate that ILE educated Phase 2: ILETES Teacher mee9ng: Collaborave Teacher Inquiry around Informal Science Learning and Science classroom and how to appropriate resources beyond the classroom for science learning. teachers a)have posi8ve percep8ons of students as learners, b) are oriented Teaching in Urban Classrooms towards “construc8vist” teaching and experiences that afford equitable science- • Teachers will adapt ISE resources according to the choices they make as A group of 10 new teachers were recruited to meet bi-for about 1.5 hours each over the course of 1.5 academic years. They shared learning, c) seek out-of-classroom learning experiences for students and, d) have teachers, their own experiences with teaching and the role in which ar8facts of their teaching (student work, lesson plans, ideas, pictures and digital video recordings of their teaching enactments) for group hands-on oriented classrooms. they find themselves vis-à-vis their students. analysis and discussion. Mee8ngs were also digitally recorded for later analysis. Two methodologies were used to inform the data Significant linkages (ranging from small to large) adhering to Cohen’s Coefficient • Teachers “voiced” their pedagogy in different, yet meaningful ways that analysis: narrave analysis and grounded theory (Charmaz, 2005; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The analysis of narraves (Polkinghorne, 1995) of Determinaon Guidelines (1988) were found between the teacher’s ILE were different from established descrip8ons of informal science informed the trajectories of teacher iden8ty-development including how they nego8ate the different contexts and ins8tu8ons in which experiences and their instruc8onal prac8ces as measured by. Alumni from both learning. programs have implemented the resources they gained from their ILE experiences they learn to teach and ul8mately do teach. The process of restorying, i.e. “reorganizing the narraves into some general type of into current curricula, including lesson planning and replicaon of ILE field trips framework” (Creswell 2007, p. 56) was used to determine how teacher iden8ty develops across learning-to-teach contexts with a IMPLICATIONS for their students as well turn-keyed their exper8se of ILE project-based par8cular aen8on to the role of the informal science learning experiences in their teaching prac8ce. assessments to their students who now produce their own ILE project-based • It is necessary to begin to think differently about the relaonship assessments. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK between informal science learning and teacher iden8ty; moving from Significant linkages were found between the teacher’s atude towards their ILE Teacher agency and iden-ty in rela-on to self, place, pracce. teaching teachers to use resources towards thinking about how the help experiences and their philosophical and instruc8onal behavior as measured by a A framework that describes iden8ty, agency, and learning to teach is salient for understanding the relaonship between informal science teachers appropriate and adapt resources to meet students’ needs thus Likert Scale: Agree/Disagree. Alumni from both programs strongly advocate ILE learning and classroom teacher iden8ty. Through the process of learning to teach, a teacher develops iden8ty in relaon to both the creang more opportuni8es for equitable science learning and experiences for their students for several reasons: both their content knowledge learning contexts and interac8ons with others in these contexts. Teachers enter professional learning with no8ons of what it means to • Thinking more about the meanings that teachers make of par8cular and the content knowledge of their students increased as a direct result of these teach and be a teacher and shape these no8ons based on the contexts in which the they learn to teach and enact teaching and in relaon resources in relaon to their iden88es and their self-perceived roles vis- experiences and implementaon of ILE resources into curriculum; teachers à-vis their students. believe that ESL/ELL’s (including special needs) will greatly benefit academically to others (students, colleagues, administrators, etc.) throughout a career. Through this process they develop agency in teaching; that is from these experiences. learning