Citizen Science Teachers: Noyce Residency Scholars Program for Western New York

This project aims to serve the national need of increasing the number and retention of diverse and effective science teachers in high-need school districts in Western New York. With a citizen science focus, this project will explore innovative strategies for preparing science teachers through civic engagement, study of local environments, and transformational approaches sustained in partnership with schools and communities. This focus will be paired with a context-specific, community-based teacher residency approach, a model that research has demonstrated to produce teachers who reflect greater demographic diversity and have notably longer retention as teachers. Taken together, a citizen science focus and residency approach may yield project outcomes that shed light on recruiting, preparing, and retaining high-quality science teachers that reflect the demographic diversity of students in P-12 schools. This project at the University at Buffalo includes partnerships with Buffalo Public Schools and Niagara Falls City Schools. The project’s overall goal is to recruit, prepare, and retain 20 science teachers across five cohorts of science career changers and undergraduate biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science majors. It is expected that project will contribute to a deeper understanding of how a civic engagement approach to local environments, when paired with a community-based approach to field experiences, can yield high quality, culturally, and linguistically-diverse teachers who have a positive impact on science engagement and learning in P-12 schools. Using surveys, interviews, and data about participation, retention, and academic performance, this project will examine the effectiveness of the project's interventions in preparing and engaging science teachers, and in placing and retaining these teachers in high-need schools. Project outcomes will be analyzed by building a series of statistical models, such as cross-sectional SEM models and longitudinal models. Quantitative data will be triangulated with qualitative data to provide a more rigorous assessment of project impact. Project findings will be disseminated in journals, at conferences dedicated to STEM teacher preparation as well as venues open to increasing the diversity of the ranks of STEM teachers, and through online reports and monographs. Findings can inform teacher education programs across the country regarding diversifying teachers in P-12 schools, with a particular focus on science teachers. This project also supports research on P-12 students’ science learning experiences and the impact of civically engaged science instruction facilitated by teachers from diverse backgrounds. This Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce). The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.