Ongoing findings from NSF Project: #1950232. Graduate students at an HBCU complete a 14-month accelerated pathway that leads to both a masters degree in biology and teacher certification while being supported with a $20,000.00 scholarship. Project offers unique professional development opportunities and academic interventions that aim to enhance teacher conceptual understanding and efficacy to teach challenging and controversial scientific and environmental topics such as climate change and evolution. Paper presentation will first focus on comparing teacher profiles of the project participants versus the average state graduate of traditional teacher preparation programs. Initially, project data on beginning teacher demographics and diversity will be compared to state and national averages. Here we will show project utility in recruiting diverse candidates into high school science teaching positions. Next, the session will present findings on GPA, and discipline specific content hours at the graduate and undergraduate level along with performance on licensure exams to compare aptitude in biological concepts in project participants vs other beginning teachers. This will demonstrate project impact on recruiting, training and producing science educators with strong content backgrounds. Prior research has shown that in general students that had high school teachers that were had strong content knowledge and high levels of efficacy positively impacted future STEM career and academic success (Adelman, 1999). Lastly, paper presentation will share results on a pre/post assessment of educator efficacy of teaching perceived controversial scientific topics such as evolution, climate change and vaccines. Project participants were pretested upon starting their academic program and post-tested upon completion. These results are compared to a control group of recent graduates from a secondary science traditional teacher preparation program. Findings show impact of program participation on growth of efficacy to teach controversial topics and project utility compared to traditional teacher preparation.

TAKEAWAYS:
Session participants will: 1. Develop an understanding on how to recruit diverse individuals into the profession of secondary science teaching 2. Understand the complexity of the STEM pipeline in regards to K-16 teaching and eventual student career and academic pursuits 3. Appreciate the need for scholarships, incentives, pay and ongoing professional for secondary science educators 4. Understand how content knowledge, academic preparation and experiences associated with research and professional development impact teacher effectiveness and student achievement 5. Realize the importance of teacher efficacy and the need for training at both the in-service and pre-service levels to foster its growth.

SPEAKERS:
Timothy Goodale (Elizabeth City State University: Elizabeth City, NC)

Although group projects have been shown to increase learning and cooperation, bullying can sneak into student peer evaluations. Examples and alternatives to ghosting presented.

TAKEAWAYS:
Science classrooms are a great place for group projects to enhance learning, but students may unwittingly be ghosted from their group, ultimately making them seem like they are not a team player. We as teachers must be diligent against bullying/ghosting.

SPEAKERS:
Diane Huelskamp (Wright State University-Lake Campus: Celina, OH)

This session focuses on improved outcomes for students’ written science explanations when including data description prompts and instructional facilitation to adapt the CER framework.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about the importance of a preliminary step of incorporating data descriptions when utilizing the CER framework to guide students’ written explanations and reasoning of data visualization.

SPEAKERS:
Andrea Drewes (Rider University: Lawrenceville, NJ)