Perspectives from Crossing Boundaries: a Two-Year and Fouryearcollege Collaboration In

PERSPECTIVES FROM CROSSING BOUNDARIES: A TWO-YEAR AND FOURYEARCOLLEGE COLLABORATION IN SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR K-12 TEACHERS

DELORES LOWE FRIEDMAN

Behavioral Science, KingsboroughCommunity College, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY11234

ELEANOR MIELE

School of Education,BrooklynCollege, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY11210

In a collaboration between a community college and a four-year college, students of science and early childhood education were encouraged to consider science teaching as a career through career awareness events, and revised active learning courses in both science and science education. The collaboration fostered the development of strong collegial ties and course alignment between campuses. It supported the addition of faculty-developed web modules for twelve courses. A further outcome was an enhanced articulation and transfer-credit agreement between the campuses. Student-participant assessment indicated that the program was effective in increasing awareness of and interest in teachingscience.

The shortage of certified science teachers has reached crisis proportions nationwide. Science teachers who do enter the field do not stay. The National Science Teachers Association survey of science teachersidentified such factors as lack of preparation, little or no mentoring or support, and job dissatisfaction, as having resulted in large numbers of teachers, at all levels of experience, leaving the field [1]. In 1996 New York began a standards-based reform of elementary, middle and secondary education that has driven a dramatic reform in state requirements for teacher preparation programs and teacher certification. It also called for changes in the way we recruit teachers. According to the 1998 Regents Task Force on Teaching,minorities are seriously underrepresented in the teaching profession in New York[2]. In New York City, the shortage of science and mathematics teachers is especially acute.

This crisis is compounded by student performance standards that increase each year. There is a growing gap between our expectations for student performance and our ability to support the growth and development of students’ abilities in science. There is also evidence that students’ enthusiasm for science decreases the longer they stay in school. Outmoded teaching methods based on lecture, rote memorization and drill have contributed to a fear of, and disaffection for, science. The pool of potential science teachers in our city’s community colleges is largely minorities and women who simply do not see themselves as scientists or science teachers.

The complexity of the problems requires a multi-focal set of approaches that create new pathways to science teaching. The failure of existing instructional models to support the production of the necessary number of quality science teachers suggested a non-traditional approach. The Advanced Technology Education Program provided the opportunity for us to cross campus boundaries to explore the value of a collaborative effort to infuse technology into science and science education courses to address the problems identified above.

Crossing Boundaries is a collaboration between KingsboroughCommunity College and BrooklynCollege, a two-year college and a four-year college of the City University of New York. The overall goal of Crossing Boundariesis to increase the number of science teachers and improve the quality of science teaching. The project seeks to engage and excite science students to consider science teaching, and to assist early childhood and education pre-service teachers to overcome their fear of science so that they might also consider teaching science. The project seeks to move both groups of students toward a four-year degree and a successful teaching career in the New York City school system. The project uses a multi-focal approach to meeting these goals. First, the project fosters interaction between science and education faculty from the two institutions, allowing sharing of resources and ideas, and building collegial bridges over the divide between two-year and four-year faculty. Specifically, these collaborative interactions revolved around four projects: jointly designed outreach to, and advisement of, community college students of science and education; one-on-one mentoring of faculty at both institutions to infuse innovative uses of web-based technology in math, science and education courses; aligning the introductory science education curricula of the two institutions; and an enhanced articulation agreement.

At the core of this collaboration are the students. Prior to the establishment of this project, there were few students in the early childhood education program interested in taking a course in the methodology of teaching math and science. Similarly, biology majors typically focused on a career in health sciences or research. Our first goal was to make students aware of the excellent career opportunities afforded by becoming a New York City science teacher.

Exciting Interest in Science Teaching

Each semester we held two Power of Science Teaching Open House events, one for education students and one for Biological Sciences majors. Our outreach targeted these two groups because we posited that we might find both students who feared science and who might overcome their fears through our course, and those who had an affinity for science who might pass on their love for science by becoming science teachers. In order to make the case for considering science teaching as a career, we brought in young science teachers who had graduated from Kingsborough with the Associate of Arts in science and continued on at BrooklynCollege to become certified teachers. These young professionals motivated students to consider teaching as a possible career by telling their personal journey to science teaching, and their daily experiences as science teachers. . In addition, we brought in teacher recruiters from the Department of Education to discuss salary, benefits, and career opportunities. Faculty from Kingsborough described the courses and the new internship component of the course work. Faculty from BrooklynCollege discussed the transfer process, opportunities for grants and scholarships and the teacher certification process. Exit surveys showed that students are largely unaware of career opportunities in science education. For instance, in a survey of 54 students who attended one open house for science majors, only 3 responded that they were already interested in a career teaching science while 46 (85%) responded that they were not. As a result of the open house, 80% responded that they would now consider a career in teaching science and agreed that the information presented was useful, illustrating the power that well-placed information can have on students such as ours with little access to accurate career information.

In addition to reaching out to students, this collaboration allowed us to reach out to faculty. Faculty collaborated in offering the Power of Teaching Open Houses discussed above, in course development and in the development of online course components. The close collaboration on these projects and resulting trust between the two-year and four-year college faculty contributed materially to the institutionalization of program outcomes.

Course Alignment

The Early Childhood Program had offered its students the course EDC 28, The Methodology of Teaching Math and Science. As evidenced in its repeated under-enrollment and cancellation for the full year prior to the Crossing Boundaries project however, students avoided taking this course (further evidence of student apprehension of the field of science.) The course was redeveloped in partnership between the science education faculty at BrooklynCollege and the early childhood faculty at Kingsborough as part of this project. The new course involved an inquiry based, hands-on approach to science activities with students working in cooperative small groups, modeling the techniques they were encouraged to use in teaching. The students were encouraged to design experiments, collect and record data, conduct measurements, and reflect with peers on the science and math skills that would be imparted through the various activities.

Assignments in the new course are drawn from required assignments in the science methods courses offered at the four-year college and are both inquiry-based and math and technology-intensive. Gender equity and the contributions of scientists from all races and nations were also emphasized. One goal of this was to ensure that all students develop facility in the educational uses of web-based and other technologies in education. Students in science education classes were also expected to use the Internet to research questions using reliable resources, and to communicate with instructors and classmates. In addition, other uses of technology in education such as digital photography were modeled. Two assessments of changes in student attitudes toward science were embedded in the course: a Likert-scale assessment of attitudes toward science and science teaching; and a pre-test and post-test of the Draw-A-Scientist Test of stereotypic attitudes toward scientists. Both showed that students’ views of science, scientists and science teaching improved markedly over the course of the semester. Specifically, the Draw-A-Scientist Test post test showed significant increases in representations of women and children engaged in active science exploration and a decrease in stereotypical imagery. Students drawings showed that they identified themselves as people who could “do science”.

Internships at Science Institutions

The course, The Methodology of Teaching Math and Science, was paired with a field-work course (Education 81). As part of the project, students took trips to science institutions and had hands-on workshops and tours of the New York Aquarium, the BrooklynBotanic Garden, and the ProspectParkAudubonCenter. We wanted to encourage students to use these institutions as resources in their teaching. For this independent study course, students worked in internships as docents under the direction of science educators at one of the science institutions. The goal was to expose students to teaching science in an environment where children are encouraged to ask questions and explore, so that the principles of inquiry-based learning would be experienced first hand. Students used their newly acquired teaching skills and content knowledge working as interns at the New York Aquarium, the BrooklynBotanic Garden, the ProspectParkAudubonCenter, and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. They also recorded their experiences through logs which captured the children’s prior knowledge, reactions to the activities, the content knowledge and the methodology used by the science educator. Students were also exposed to the resource libraries at the institutions that made them aware of children’s content books and children’s literature that would support the units of study they were exploring.

The students had extremely positive reactions to this work and, later, spoke of enjoying feeling like “experts” in certain areas.The trips and the internships were a very successful part of the program. Students appreciated becoming experts in areas of science that they were not knowledgeable about before the project. One student learned about cherry blossom trees and cherry blossom season, another became knowledgeable about sea mammals. One student said, “I have never felt so alive as I have working at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.” Another student created and presented an hour-long lesson on worms at the Children’s Museum, engaging children in an integrated unit examining worms and their movement, and engaging the children in a discussion and journaling, and reading a book to them.

A strengthened relationship between the college and the science institutions is an added benefit of the Crossing Boundaries project. Through this infusion of new resources for science education, college students who are preparing to enter New York City classrooms have become comfortable with the new technology and inquiry-based learning and are more prepared to use these strategies to teach science to their own students.

Students’ interest in the field trips and internships and the hands-on inquiry based nature of the course is revealed in their own words. The students were asked to write a brief description of what they liked and didn’t like about the course after having a focus group discussion during the last day of class. They were not to put their names on their commentary so that they could remain anonymous. Here is a small sample of their comments:

When I went to register for this class I was reluctant to write down, EDC 28. Science has never been one of my favorite subjects. Growing up it was textbooks and terminology, we would rarely put our hands into it. My hands only moved with a pen or a pencil. When the class first began and we were going on trips, I felt like a kid again. I would wake up before the alarm clock would go off and didn’t need to push the snooze button. In class experiments were hands-on and incorporated different curriculum areas. My senses were alive, we saw, listened and felt. I was interested and aware. I opened my horizons to let science into my views. I no longer feel that science has to come from endless days of writing, but the chance of getting hands on I know now that when I become a teacher I will refer back to my portfolio and memories of EDC 28.

The comments reveal that the course excited the scientists within the students.

The class was very intriguing. I learned a lot from it. The topics kept me on my toes and made me want to learn more and ask more questions. Something I would of liked to see is a topic on the solar system. Taking this course made me consider a field in teaching, but would love to be a doctor.

The course stimulated the curiosity the students had when they were children. This is important because it will help them to respect the child’s involvement in science activity.

I enjoyed the chance to reenter the excitement I once had in learning. The activity refreshed my love for exploring even when I had insecurity about materials used. I wish more time was spent on activities, than worry of curriculum. The math wasn’t used as much as science, but I was exposed to new approaches. Thank you. I just wish I took less classes to focus more on the experience.

Many students spoke about there not being enough time in the class. This was a two-hour class wherein there were always hands-on activities, some discussion of the methodology used, and the outcomes (skills or abilities) that would develop from the activity in math and science. There were two long-term investigations of seeds and metamorphosis, but invariably the students felt there was not enough time. Students engaged in developing their own experiments, collecting and recording data, and reflection on the activity. .

I learned not to be afraid to teach science to children. I just wish the class met more often. I felt it went by too quickly, and I felt that I was rushed. All that aside, I had a really great time in class learning and experimenting with science.

The internship program was so successful that we are planning to institute it in the other EDC 28 courses. The problem with doing so is having a sufficient number of placements in science institutions for students. We will reach out to other science institutions to secure placements for our growing numbers of students.

The students felt that the focus on math could have been stronger. Despite the measurement and graphing done as an integral part of their science experiments, some felt as if they still feared math and they did not feel as empowered to teach math as they did to teach science. The parallel course at the 4-year college had increased the focus on quantitative reasoning over the past several years, including activities on measurement, data collection, graphing, metrics, and examination of standards-based mathematics activities. Faculty at the two colleges conferred and decided to change the textbook, which now has an equal focus on each discipline, and in each activity math and science skills are examined with equal attention.

Course Development

The revamped biology course (Biology 33) was developed with input from BrooklynCollege faculty in biology and based on the BrooklynCollege “virtual core”. Brooklyn’s virtual core is a unique instructional design in which students spend 2/3 of their time in class and 1/3 in web-based instruction. The virtual core stresses dynamic, interactive learning, teaching skills on-line, smooth integration with classroom lectures, and extensive student-to-student communication. In the new Kingsborough biology course students learn how the diversity of life is unified by evolutionary and genetic principles through completion of traditional laboratory and computer-based virtual laboratory exercises on such topics as genetic engineering, the ecosystem, and human development and aging.

The project PI who developed Bio 33 served as faculty mentor for others to develop web-enhanced instructional tools. Faculty members who had reservations about their ability to teach with technology were mentored by a supportive colleague committed to infusing web-based instruction who was “one step ahead”. Over the course of the grant, twelve faculty members, six from each institution, were individually mentored to produce a web-based instructional module or interactive syllabus for use in their classes for science or science education. These online materials now benefit over 1,200 students a year. Students in one such course were asked to evaluate the web-based component of this course. Of these students, 82% agreed that, “ I know more about the subject studies in this exercise than I did previously.” 89 % “enjoyed working on this exercise on my own at home.” A full 94% agreed with the statement, “I believe I can use the ideas and methods in this exercise with my own students when I become a teacher.” This group provided evidence of the continuing need to support teachers in developing a level of comfort with using technology. 53% of students agreed with the statement, “I am more comfortable using computers as a result of this exercise.”