PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #11: Education: Post-graduate and Outreach.
Monday, August 5. Presentation from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC

Graduate teaching fellow impacts on high school teachers.

TRAUTMANN, NANCY¹, KRASNY, MARIANNE^*,1, AVERY, LEANNE¹, ¹ Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

ABSTRACT- The National Science Foundation funds nearly 60 Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) projects across the US, through which graduate and undergraduate students work with teachers and students in pre-college science classrooms. Graduate fellows in the Cornell GK-12 program guide high school students in authentic research, add inquiry components to standard high school labs, and share their own research experiences. Whereas GK-12 programs have multiple goals for fellows, students, and teachers, the objective of this study was to determine to what extent university fellows working in secondary-level classrooms positively influence teacher attitudes and beliefs about inquiry-based teaching practices. We conducted a series of one-on-one and focus group interviews with teachers participating in the program. Teachers with previous scientific research experience were able to introduce new topics and to teach existing topics in new ways with assistance from the fellows. However, teachers with no previous research experience benefited from the fellows more dramatically. These teachers reported gaining skills and/or the confidence needed to implement open-ended student inquiry in their classrooms as a result of their interaction with the fellows and observations of the fellows teaching. The underlying question of our continuing research is how GK-12 programs can best be designed to help classroom teachers successfully make the difficult transition to open-ended, inquiry-based teaching practices.

KEY WORDS: teacher education, high school education, graduate education, GK-12