What is the compelling question or challenge?
How do we empower K-12 Educators to develop their own new approaches to teaching and learning in STEM disciplines when such innovation is often risky, expensive, and grows only with long-term support?
What do we know now about this Big Idea and what are the key research questions we need to address?
Constructive STEM professional development is not something to be performed upon teachers regardless who the facilitators are or what mandate or intention they have. Some teachers are able to maximize those opportunities, but they are the exception. Studies show that the majority of teachers benefit from development when the teachers themselves identify the topic, via community models like the Professional Learning Community model (e.g., Hord 2004), and when the development is sustained over time at least through the planning and implementation phases (Guggenheim 2013). Both of these traits are expensive to implement concerning teachers‚ time, equipment acquisition, and implementation support.
Like in the business world, innovation in the education world often has to be supported through pooled space and resources, access to experience and expertise, and a community that encourages risk-taking and accountability. School districts, even regional school districts or intermediate units, often cannot provide these supports inadequate supply. However, the “business incubator” model commonly used by research universities to provide resources and expertise in partnership with local small businesses or entrepreneurs and government agencies, suggests a new path forward to foster the very innovation necessary to develop future generations of scientifically-literate and engineering-savvy citizens. This submission for the 2026 Big Idea Machine proposes to extend the business incubator model toward a STEM Teaching and Learning Incubator to foster innovations in the STEM classroom and in STEM professional development.
In my vision for the STEM Teaching and Learning Incubator model, institutions of higher learning would provide a regional hub for teachers to gain access to pooled space and STEM-related equipment along with skills and content workshops necessary to utilize them. The incubator would also provide teachers with long-duration support for the design, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination for their ideas both across the region and the nation. Participating teachers would gain access to STEM expertise in support of their teaching as well as access to research opportunities for themselves and their students. Most importantly, the incubator can support the formation of a community of practice for STEM educator-scientists, affording them a chance to leverage regional and national partnerships to secure new opportunities for themselves and their students regardless of classroom size, location, or district budgets. When thus empowered, STEM education will thrive as our teachers are given a real chance to innovate in a supportive environment where they can develop and demonstrate new answers to the questions of what works in STEM education.
To test the effectiveness of STEM Teaching and Learning Incubator, we first must investigate the following research questions:
1) How effective is increased access to long-duration K-12 STEM teacher professional development at increasing regional STEM teaching effectiveness across varied educational settings?
2) How adequate is improved access to constant implementation support and pooled STEM research resources at improving student learning of science and engineering practices?
3) What are the benefits to institutions of higher education of implementing a “business incubator” model for regional STEM teacher professional development?
Successful implementation and evaluation of this professional development model have the potential to allow the STEM Teaching and Learning Incubator to become a significant shift in how regional partnerships can grease the skids of innovation among all of our STEM educators regardless of their local district infrastructure.
Why does it matter? What scientific discoveries, innovations, and desired societal outcomes might result from investment in this area?
Improving K-12 STEM education has been central to U.S. education policy since the National Defense Education Act enacted 60 years ago. Since that time, it has been widely accepted that excellent STEM education requires specialized teacher training that is continually refreshed through professional development. Until the 2000s, this professional development was often provided by external organizations during a one-time, short-term interaction. After these events, teachers are left to their own devices to plan and carry out implementation during the subsequent school year. Evaluation studies revealed that this approach led to either low adoption rates or incorrect application of the new material (Wojnowski and Pea 2004). Community-based approaches to professional development are able to address these flaws in part but proved to be prohibitively expensive for many districts due to time, personnel, and equipment constraints. In many cases, the gap in district tax-bases made the difference between successful teacher adoption of new classroom interventions and allowing otherwise talented educators to be forced away from opportunities for students to engage in authentic STEM investigation and design.
I expect that the STEM Teaching and Learning Incubator will provide a way to circumvent these issues. By design, the incubator is a space where K-12 educators will be able to access the area and resources needed for them to develop their own ideas. Content experts, be they faculty, staff, or research assistants, would be readily available to answer STEM-related questions or to assist teachers and students in the design of their own investigations. Meanwhile, STEM education specialists would be able to provide the long-duration support to help the teachers in all phases of adopting new ideas from planning and funding through implementation in the field or the classroom. Further, I expect incubators to be able to help teachers to secure financing through grant-writing support, access to HSIRB reviews and recruiting like-minded teachers to increase the impact funding agencies look for. In addition to those grant opportunities, the incubator should be able to secure funding for a shared collection of STEM apparatus, such as large 3D-printing or laser wood-cutting devices, Arduino sensors and electronic testing equipment, classroom sets of environmental testing equipment, or even more significant, more sensitive lab equipment like prism spectrometers or radiosonde (a.k.a. weather balloon) launch systems. The incubator might also demonstrate a reliable way for advanced students to get time on supercomputers or mass spectrometers. When the STEM Teaching and Learning Incubator reflects the ability to support teachers in bringing innovation to their classes while maintaining its financial sustainability, it could then become a widely accepted way to promote STEM learning in K-12 schools.
If we invest in this area, what would success look like?
Success for the STEM Teaching and Learning Incubator model will look like a network of regionally-based K-12 educator cohorts where the spark of innovation and creativity can be nurtured to make real impacts on K-12 STEM education. Teachers in these regional cohorts will have space and resources to “play,” developing new skills and bringing them to bear on locally-relevant challenges. Trained teachers will be engaging their students in the practices of science and engineering using equipment to which they might not otherwise have access. With access to equipment and expertise, students and teachers will demonstrate stronger identities as scientifically-literate citizens. The Incubator would leverage access to the entire regional educator cohort to illustrate an idea’s scalability and connect the most-effective ideas with funding partners who enable a real impact on the educational community.
At the same time, STEM researchers at the college or university are partnering with the Incubator to match their STEM research to the needs of area educators and students, thereby creating genuinely impactful broader impacts plans. The successful Incubator will also be helping these researchers to define robust evaluation and assessment plans, apply for supplemental education funding, align their work with state-mandated student learning standards, secure needed background checks and HSIRB approvals, and recruit teachers who will be invested in active participation with the project investigators. These connections will allow our best STEM research projects to make impacts that extend to the next generation of STEM professionals in our K-12 classrooms.
Why is this the right time to invest in this area?
According to the 2010 Report to the President “Prepare and Inspire: K-12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America’s Future,” The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) indicated that American students’ STEM expertise is decreasing. In part, these decreases result from schools' lack of teachers with enough STEM expertise and passion to inspire their students as well as recognizing that teachers require adequate support, including appropriate professional development.
Specific recommendations that sought to remedy these issues included:
- Adoption of empirically validated teaching practices in STEM;
- Providing substantial support for programs that offer training for current and future faculty in evidence-based teaching methods, and;
- Building new models for leveraging assets and expertise and conducting STEM education research and evaluation.
References
Gullamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers: Effective Professional Development. Alexandria, VA: Center for Public Education, 44 pp. Retrieved from:
Hord, S. (2004). Professional Learning Communities: Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 72 pp.
Wojnowski, B. & Pea, C. (Eds.). (2014). Models and approaches to STEM professional development. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press
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