By: Salvatore G. Garofalo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Queens College, City University of New York
When thinking about science education during the pandemic, a critical theme emerged: space matters. Teaching and learning about science education through video-conferencing software does not provide the appropriate environmental conditions to adequately prepare teacher candidates for real-world, in-person teaching (Rapanta et al., 2021; Ray & Srivastava, 2020). The flattening of the environment to two-dimensional computer screens and the isolation by physical distance between and among teacher and students created barriers to spatial reasoning, haptic perception, and distributed cognition, three components that are necessary for a thriving learning environment (Garofalo & Farenga, 2021; Garofalo, 2022). Backed by cognitive psychology research to support and enhance learning, my research team and I proposed and received an NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship grant (DUE #2049983) to provide our teacher candidates with a fully immersive, three-dimensional learning experience that aims to broaden teacher candidates’ perspective on science education.
Our SciTech TEAMS Program at Queens College reintroduces science educators to student-centered, inquiry-based learning that is critical for science content acquisition through outdoor education, informal learning environments, and appropriate modern technology integration to support science education in a post-pandemic world. Science and science education needs to be responsive, and the SciTech TEAMS Program is an example of how teacher preparation can be responsive to the challenges in society and education.
Outdoor Education
The Science Education Program has always incorporated outdoor education through GLOBE training of teacher candidates (The GLOBE Program, 2020). Science, which is the study of the natural universe, requires an understanding of nature. We believe that science educators must be knowledgeable of the content they teach by experiencing it through real-world, immersive, and haptic interactions. Our teacher candidates live and work in New York City which supports motivated participation in the outdoor education program at Black Rock Forest in the Hudson Valley in New York (Garofalo, 2018). The use of the Black Rock Forest Conservatory for an initial field experience serves as more than a natural field site, laboratories, and dorms but also a venue to build professional relationships that have endured throughout the program. The informal learning experiences that were developed at Black Rock Forest for the program relate to real-world science applications that could be used in classrooms by science educators. The curriculum was structured by the integration of GLOBE protocols that supported curricula topics across disciplines that reinforced cross-cutting concepts, disciplinary core ideas, and science and engineering practices which are tenants of the Next Generation Science Standards (Schweingruber, Keller, & Quinn, 2012).
We quickly realized the importance of the Black Rock Forest experience for both community building and the development of practical field-based science content development. Once at the field station, candidates worked together to explore their natural surroundings while employing GLOBE protocols for the Earth spheres: Atmosphere, Biosphere, Hydrosphere, and Pedosphere (Soil). Attending the Black Rock Forest Program is often the first opportunity where teacher candidates spend time with each other outside of the classroom. Through the Black Rock Forest experience, our teacher candidates rely on each other and create bonds that are later utilized through the sharing of materials and a network for job searches, which makes the experience invaluable to their pedagogical content and professional education. In terms of content, GLOBE protocols are utilized during the student teaching experience which is particularly motivating for young learners as they are able to explore the natural world beyond their classrooms. We believe this supports retention in the Science Education Program as well as in their careers. We continue to analyze retention data as we are in contact with our alumni who often become cooperating teachers for new cohorts of students. Initial data has been presented at the annual national Noyce conference and published in the AERA SIG Studying Self-Regulating Learning Times Magazine (Garofalo, Farenga, & Subramaniam, 2021).
Informal Learning Environments
The second field-based activity includes an informal STEM workshop series at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) in Queens. NYSCI is a science museum that allows attendees to physically interact with exhibits and workshops to experience science, hands-on. The use of NYSCI is to demonstrate the power of community-based informal learning opportunities that are available to teachers. During their time at NYSCI, candidates are provided the opportunity to demonstrate science concepts to the museum’s patrons. This includes performing lab demonstrations and guiding learners on how to navigate the hands-on components of exhibits. In doing so, the candidates experience the importance of motivating and capturing the attention of their audience while conducting a demonstration to non-captive observers. Candidates also gain an appreciation for bridging the gap between formal and informal learning experiences that in turn may improve student motivation, interest, and achievement (Holmes, 2011). The experience provides a unique task for candidates to reproduce this level of engagement in their own classrooms. The NYSCI experience also supports an opportunity to try new pedagogical techniques in a relaxed environment without the stress of curriculum time constraints. SciTech TEAMS candidates report the NYSCI experience to be helpful in their motivation to teach science and as an additional cohort-building opportunity aiding in retention. Additionally, this experience provides a “behind-the-scenes” look at what organically motivates young children with science. Candidates bring this knowledge into their own classrooms to develop lessons that demonstrate phenomena that amazes and engages young science learners.
Appropriate Modern Technology Use
The evolution of technology happens at a speed greater than the speed of implementation of any tool or technique in a school environment. A key goal of the SciTech TEAMS program is to adequately prepare teacher candidates to make informed decisions about the use of technology in the classroom. In addition to the required course on theory of technology implementation, we have added a technology seminar to teach how to evaluate and use multimedia digital applications, hardware, distance learning platforms, and a variety of reputable Internet resources to support science instruction and critical analysis of content. This seminar also fosters student motivation by using personal technologies (mobile phones and tablets) as tools for conducting authentic science investigations. The workshop-style seminar provides tools to find, create, and use real-time data (GLOBE, NASA, NOAA databases) and the analytical pedagogical foundation of how to use large data sets to engage students in detecting patterns in the natural environment thereby enhancing data analytics and computational skills of students to develop into careers in the field.
Two specific examples include drones and artificial intelligence. SciTech TEAMS teacher candidates are provided the opportunity to fly drones (see photo above) and utilize various measurement tools and software to conceptualize the use of this technology in the classroom. Motivation and resilience in the use of drone technology was high, and initial reports from teacher candidates suggest that previous use of similar technologies, such as video games, provided a small learning curve. Candidates were particularly excited to use drones in conjunction with heart rate monitors to measure heart rate during stressful situations as well as the use of digital mapping tools to measure acceleration and trajectory. Artificial intelligence was also introduced with the proliferation of chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Teacher candidates had the opportunity to use these tools and explore appropriate uses of the technology in the classroom with their peers, such as a starting-off point for student research or ideas for lesson plans and curriculum development for new teachers. Candidates participated in several rounds of group discussion to think about how artificial intelligence can be leveraged in the classroom as well as tackle real-world issues in their classrooms. Some examples included: critiquing work, simulating conversations with historical figures, translating for English Language Learners, and differentiating instruction. Both of these technologies are innovative and rapidly changing, providing our candidates with a unique opportunity to explore without the weight of prior “best methods” research influencing their ideas.
Network
The culmination of each year’s work within the program is the annual Reimagining Science & Technology Education Conference held at Queens College. Each year, teacher candidates and all stakeholders in the program (including cooperating teachers, middle and high school science chairs, science faculty, secondary education faculty, alumni, and college administrators) attend the conference to support each other and share ideas. The conference also includes workshops for middle and high school students to expose them to new pedagogical techniques and technologies explored by SciTech scholars. Conference attendees listen to a keynote address by a research scientist; participate in workshops on innovations in science education, such as incorporating large datasets for analysis, and safe, inexpensive chemistry demonstrations; and learn from poster presentations by both graduate students and high school students.
Outcomes
The Queens College Science Education Program has a multi-faceted reputation for being one of the most diverse programs on campus and training highly qualified teacher candidates sought after by schools in the surrounding neighborhoods. Our extensive network of cooperating teachers and schools was the result of over ten years of networking among the full-time science education faculty and the schools (Dinkelman, 2012). This work has built a strong, successful program.
The addition of the SciTech TEAMS Program has provided an opportunity to provide our teacher candidates with opportunities that challenge their creativity and pedagogical content knowledge to become exceptional science educators. These opportunities have enticed many perspective students which has been an incredibly useful recruitment tool. Cohort-building through the duration of the program has supported resiliency of our candidates and their retention in the program and career. SciTech TEAMS scholars utilize GLOBE protocols learned at Black Rock Forest, incorporate hands-on demonstrations acquired at NYSCI with their classrooms as early as their first year teaching, and appropriately integrate new technology into their curricula. Administrators are pleased to hire our candidates who take their own students outside to explore the natural world, navigate large, real-world datasets to teach and explore phenomena, and know the importance of hands-on inquiry.
With the pandemic moving behind us, we continue to explore the importance of the responsiveness and spatial nature of science education (Ness, Farenga, & Garofalo, 2017). Our primary method of responsiveness is two-fold: to prepare our teacher candidates for evolving standards and to expose them to cutting-edge technology. The added technology seminar provides opportunities for teacher candidates to receive an extra semester of coursework directly dealing with the NGSS’s disciplinary core ideas, cross-cutting concepts, and science and engineering practices. They also work with and explore evolving AI technologies. Past students express the importance of this technology seminar for their student teaching experience. Additionally, the use of drones during the seminar provides candidates an opportunity to exercise their spatial abilities while drawing connections to the spatial content they teach. New drone technology utilized in the program includes virtual reality headsets to operate drones. Each semester of the SciTech TEAMS Program has afforded new opportunities for the research team and our teacher candidates. We expect to continue innovating our program to best support our students to be prepared for the constantly changing educational landscape.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to 2023 ARISE blog series editor, Josh Ellis, for his support of the author. Check out the other blogs centered on technology in the 2023 series: Empowering Educators to Enact Equity Via Computational Thinking by Ryoko Yamaguchi and Cyntrica Eaton and Technology in Teacher Education: Science, Society, and Students by Josh Ellis.
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Salvatore G. Garofalo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Queens College, City University of New York
salvatore.garofalo@qc.cuny.edu
Salvatore Garofalo is Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Education at Queens College, CUNY. He earned his doctorate in Cognitive Science at Columbia University. His expertise is in pedagogical content knowledge related to technology integration in science education. His areas of research include cognition in science, the development of spatial thinking, and the impact of technology on spatial ability and conceptual understanding. He is coauthor of Spatial Intelligence: Why it Matters from Birth through the Lifespan. Dr. Garofalo is a co-principal investigator on an NSF Noyce grant that investigates exploratory practices, technology integration, and retention of educators in STEM education.
