Rohit Mehta and Chris Seals | Educational Psychology and Educational Technology

Описание: The MSU-Wipro STEM & Leadership Fellowship Program (MSUrbanSTEM.org) is a 9-credit graduate certificate that focuses on empowering math and science teachers in K-12 settings to create transformative, innovative, and multimodal instructional experiences for students. Each cohort includes in-service teachers from the urban setting of Chicago Public Schools, who meet face-to-face in summer for two weeks led by a team of four to six instructors, including a lead instructor from Michigan State University. Following the face-to-face instruction, instructors lead online instruction segments in fall and spring to help the fellows work on year-long projects. In addition, two additional face-to-face meetings are held each of these semesters. Throughout the year, we maintain a personalized advisor-student relationship by assigning 8-10 fellows to each instructor, who are responsible for the success of their fellows. Both the face-to-face and online sessions are driven by the Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), which was used to both create and model a teaching approach that integrates technology to support pedagogical practices to be used in STEM classrooms in ways that are most beneficial for student engagement and understating of the subject matter. We integrated computer and mobile devices and their applications into the assignments that afforded multimodal instruction and composition. The fellows, who varied on their comfort-level with digital technology, used technology to create several multimodal projects and felt more confident in implementing similar practices in their classrooms. Finding a “sweet spot” between technology, pedagogy, and content was important to successful teacher training. We surveyed our fellows throughout the year to assess their TPACK, leadership, and self-efficacy to study the influence of the program on their practices and confidence in their respective schools. We also use this data to research on creativity in teaching and learning and role of aesthetics in STEM.