At the November 16, 2007 STEM Educator Collaboration Event, the Center's Executive Director, Charles Brown, shared the Center's initial teacher-focused strategy. In the feedback session entitled "Beginning the Conversation", groups of participants were asked to respond to three questions. These were:
- What did you hear that you liked and makes you want to be involved?
- What did you hear that you didn't like and creates a barrier to your involvement?
- What didn't you hear that if you had heard it would make you want to be involved?
We received literally hundreds of pieces of input from the nearly 200 educators in attendance. We have reviewed all of this data and have developed a digest of the responses that is shown below. This input is proving to be enormously valuable as the Center further develops ways to assist STEM educators increase the number of students interested in curricula and careers in mathematics, science and related technologies.
Further feedback or input on these three questions is welcome. Please send it to cbrown@raccems.org
Summary of Feedback:
Question 1: What did you hear that you liked and makes you want to be involved?
"Glad to see that Higher Ed is doing something about this crisis"
Participants liked seeing Rochester Higher Ed. taking the initiative to address the silent crisis within the region. Although participants wanted much more detail they thought that this initiative is "action oriented" and "not just throwing money at a problem". They saw the approach as potentially unifying across the "community".
"We liked the sense of collaboration that was exhibited today. How do we build on this spirit?"
Participants commented positively on the spirit of collaboration
- Higher Ed to Higher Ed.
- K-12 to Higher Ed.
- across districts.
They saw it as key to the success of improving STEM education. They were not sure that other important and necessary collaborative players were in the room e.g. private educators, administrators, parents, BOE members, industry.
"We believe we are seeing the beginning of a commitment to sustainable improvement in STEM education."
Participants commented positively for seeing an integrated approach to address STEM education reform but expressed concerned that the STEM efforts were not positioned in the context of other curricular priorities e.g. ELA, art, music, NCLB Special Ed..
"We like the implied commitment to inquiry-based teaching and learning"
Participants commented positively on the apparent commitment to inquiry-based educational priorities but were skeptical about whether adequate support existed with the administration to embrace this particularly in light of the perceived trade off to performing well on standardized tests.(teaching to the test). They cited a need for greater education of these techniques as pre-service teachers as well on-going PD for in-service teachers.
"We like several of the specific initial initiatives we heard about today"
Among the initiative that were specifically mentioned multiple times were
- Visiting scientist program
- Early career mentoring
- Non-traditional pathways (however concerns were also voice about whether such teachers would be adequately prepared.
- Measurement systems as long as they were relevant
- Modeling of inquiry pedagogy by UG teacher ed. and content faculty.
Question 2: What did you hear that you didn't like and creates a barrier to your involvement?
"We didn't hear a good appreciation of the difficulties of implementing an inquiry-based pedagogical model in the "real world" we teachers live in"
Participants felt that the strategy speaker nor the keynoter adequately acknowledged nor addressed the barriers that exist for fully implementing an inquiry-based pedagogy. These included
- the current inability to adequately assess inquiry-based approaches and the seeming incompatibility with the current achievement test assessment methodologies
- structural barriers such as class schedules (frequency and duration) etc
- adequate training and practice (i.e. time and $ allocation) to obtain the necessary skills
"We didn't hear how you propose to address the need for additional $'s, people and time to undertake the STEM education reforms"
Implementation of this strategy is going to take more resources in $'s, people and time. Where are these resources going to come from and what will be the prioritization methodology vs. other important initiatives, e.g. ELA and other NCLB requiremnts?
"We think the proposed strategy is trying to cover too much, is too lofty, and doesn't contain any fundamentally new ideas"
Participants felt that the strategy was trying to cover too much at one time. In addition, there were feelings expressed that the statements of both the problem and the strategy were at too high a level ("too lofty"). Finally, some felt that the initial tactics contained nothing new and/or they were far too incremental to have a meaningful impact.
"We didn't hear enough specifics that would enable us to believe that this is doable"
This is related to the issue of resources as well. Beyond that issue participants didn't feel that there were enough specifics (This item could also be listed under question No. 3)
"Certain aspects of the initial tactics concern us"
Among the specific tactics, concerns were expressed that:
- The visiting scientist needed to address math as well
- The visiting scientist program shouldn't be restricted to elementary levels.
- Additional mentoring should not be an additional performance appraisal system.
- Additional measurement could drive undesired behavior i.e. teaching to the test.
Question 3: What didn't you hear that if you had heard it would make you want to be involved?
"We didn't hear how this effort aligns with the direction of the NY State Education Department"
Participants correctly pointed out that the strategy presentation made no mention of how it was or was not aligned w/ State ED strategies, guidelines and directives. They felt that alignment was important.
"We didn't feel that either the message or the audience was broadly representative of not only STEM teachers but also technology and vocational educators, other disciplines as well as administrators, BOE members, and industry"
Many participants questions as to whether "the right people" were in the room. Did we really have the entire "community of educators" there? Did we have all the necessary people committed to make the necessary changes?
"We didn't hear how this program really addresses the needs of diverse students w/ respect to SE status, race, gender etc."
Although the mission states a focus on women, students of color and with disabilities, the strategy doesn't appear to have programs that were designed by members of these groups nor specifically focused on their needs.
"We didn't hear enough about the regional relationship between STEM literacy and future employment opportunities."
Although the stated reason for pursuing a solution to the silent crisis the economy and national security, there was no local tie to the hoped for increase in science and math literacy and the impact on potential future local employment.
"We didn't hear how we will continue this collaboration and more specifically how technology might be used to enable it"
As stated in the answers to question No. 1, attendees like the spirit of collaboration evident during the event. However, they didn't hear any specifics how this might continue. More specifically, several attendees were expecting to hear information on how technology e.g. Web 2 tools, will be used to enable continued collaboration. [Top]