Preparing Preservice Teachers to be Interdisciplinary Citizen Science Leaders in High-Need School Districts

By: Kwame N. Owusu-Daaku, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of West Florida
Melissa K. Demetrikopoulos, Ph.D., Director of Scientific Communications, Institute for Biomedical Philosophy
John L. Pecore, Ph.D., Professor, STEM Education, University of West Florida
Aletheia L. Zambesi, EdD, Lecturer, University of West Florida

The University of West Florida (UWF)-Teach Program prepares STEM majors to become STEM teachers in high-need school districts (HNSDs) and provides the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Robert Noyce Teacher scholarship to qualified candidates (DUE #1660615 and #2151061). Noyce scholar teacher candidates are placed in school districts with higher populations of low-income and minoritized students who underperform on standardized assessments as compared to their non-low income or non-minoritized counterparts (Florida Department of Education, 2023). The performance on mathematics and science assessments by economically disadvantaged and minoritized students in these HNSDs might be due to a myriad of factors – many of them systemic and structural. One of these factors may be that the STEM material presented in the classroom is not typically culturally relevant or culturally sustaining for the students compared to their non-economically disadvantaged or non-minoritized counterparts. Since public education is supposed to be the great equalizer (Marina & Holmes, 2009), STEM teachers in HNSDs need to make STEM more accessible and equitable for their students.

Developing the capacity of Noyce scholars to engage students in citizen science provides an opportunity for new teachers to become STEM leaders by expanding access and promoting equity through implementing culturally relevant citizen science projects (CSPs). These projects not only increase relevant cultural competence, but also help further develop Noyce scholars’ pedagogical content knowledge and their ability to engage secondary students in high-need schools. These projects give Noyce scholars hands-on experience and supportive mentorship while working in a high-need classroom.

A Model that Works

In pursuit of enhancing student access to, and equity in, STEM subjects, UWF-Teach employs a culturally relevant citizen science orientation to prepare preservice STEM teachers to develop and implement classroom lessons that will be more accessible for their students. Preservice teachers gain experience with culturally relevant pedagogies, such as interdisciplinary CSPs, which facilitate implementation of a range of accessible and equitable pedagogies in the HNSDs where the teachers will work.

Our interdisciplinary citizen science model (Figure 1) involves pairing two Noyce scholars from different STEM disciplines with a UWF STEM faculty to conduct a citizen science research project. Prior to the scholars’ last field experience (apprenticeship teaching) course, they develop a citizen science classroom lesson in collaboration with a middle or high school teacher. Throughout the process, Noyce scholars receive support from a near-peer mentor who is a graduate of the UWF-Teach program and has previously participated in this model. In recent years, when these near-peer mentors graduate and become secondary STEM teachers, they serve as the middle or high school teacher mentors. The team of Noyce scholars, university faculty, and secondary teachers collectively spend 40 to 60 hours over the summer months collaborating on the design of a CSP for instruction of middle or high school students. The team develops an investigatory protocol and associated lessons to build student knowledge and research skills. During and after the summer, Noyce scholars participate in surveys and focus groups about their experience while the STEM faculty and secondary teachers participate in structured interviews.

Figure 1:  Structure of Culturally Relevant Citizen Science Research Project

The Model in Practice

By using a culturally relevant pedagogy that is culturally sustaining, previously underserved students will be more engaged in their STEM lessons and will likely ultimately perform better on their standardized assessments and be more likely to enter the STEM workforce (Byrd, 2016). One example of a UWF-Teach culturally relevant CSP involves using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s  Community Collaborative on Rain Hail and Snow Network. During the citizen science portion of the lesson, students learn about the causes of flooding, collect precipitation data, record data into a national database, and map results using geographic information systems software. For the culturally relevant component of the project, the teacher facilitates class discussions asking students to consider the ways in which a single flood event impacts various social groups differently and the resilience of different groups or individuals to these impacts.

This video describes a UWF-Teach CSP that fostered interdisciplinary collaboration between two Noyce scholars, one teaching math and one environmental science, to develop a lesson plan to analyze sand dunes utilizing the Pythagorean theorem and estimating vegetation percentages.

Another video shows the implementation of the sand dunes lesson with two new scholars and students in the field, mentored by a former Noyce scholar and current teacher. Participating in this collaborative interdisciplinary experience prepares graduated Noyce scholars to be teacher leaders for current Noyce scholars.

What Are the Benefits of This Approach?

According to Rushton and Reiss (2019), participation in CSPs with students leads to the formation of a teacher scientist identity. Teachers are afforded the opportunity to become teacher leaders in several arenas through the collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to citizen science professional development. Our data demonstrates that the citizen science learning opportunity increases preservice STEM teacher interest in teaching underserved students and provides a mechanism to make STEM more accessible to and equitable for their students in the classroom. Additionally, research-active teachers have an increased sense of self-belief and professional worth (Rushton & Reiss, 2019). Furthermore, citizen science allows students to engage in authentic STEM research which will translate to broader STEM learning outcomes including content knowledge, scientific processes, and agency (Aristeidou et al., 2022).

It has been shown that engagement in an authentic research project will enhance Noyce scholars’ STEM self-efficacy and facilitate the realization that they could become STEM teacher leaders. For example, 100% of scholars reported that they would like to be a teacher; 96.4% reported that they could be a teacher; and 92.9% reported thinking of themselves as a teaching professional. In addition, scholar alumni who participated as near-peer mentors reported that connecting back to the program was helpful for their leadership development. Scholars who participated in the CSP also reported that the experience helped develop leadership skills that they plan to use to lead after school clubs or to share the citizen science approach with other teachers at their schools.

What Do Participants Say About This Approach?

Noyce Scholars
Twelve Noyce scholars have participated in a summer CSP including translating the project into teaching modules. During and after the summer program, Noyce scholars participate in surveys and focus groups about their experiences while the STEM faculty and secondary teachers participate in structured interviews. All scholars (100%) reported that the program influenced how they thought about teaching in HNSDs and helped them prepare for teaching in these districts. Scholars were asked to rank all components of UWF-Teach (such as summer citizen science programming, book club, specific coursework, internship etc.) in terms of how the program components affected their interests in teaching careers, and to only include components in their ranking that affected their interest in the following ways: interest in teaching, interest in teaching underserved students, interest in teaching in high-need schools. Figure 2 illustrates how the citizen science programming ranked in the aforementioned interests.

Figure 2: Rank of Citizen Science Programming Among UWF-Teach Program Components

When exploring the program components that participants indicated had increased their interest, citizen science programming was among the top five components for increasing interest in teaching in general and in teaching underserved students among science and math major Noyce scholars. Two other components that also increased their interest were the education courses and their teaching placements as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Rank of Education Courses and Teaching Placements Among UWF-Teach Program Components

Overall, Noyce scholars reported that the connection to the UWF-Teach program through the CSP was helpful for them in their teaching placements. Scholars also reported that they plan to implement their CSPs or some modified version of it in their classroom. The following are some representative quotes from Noyce scholars about their experience:

University STEM Faculty
University STEM faculty reported that the project was productive, and that the Noyce scholars were able to work directly on research or observe research to gain additional perspectives. The following are some representative quotes from university STEM faculty:

Noyce Alumni Near-Peer Mentors
Near-peer mentors, who had also engaged in the citizen science programming as scholars, had the following to share:

Secondary School Teacher Mentors
Secondary school teacher mentors stated the following about their experience with the citizen science programming:

We Need Citizen Science STEM Teacher Leaders in High-need School Districts

Including STEM content that is related to STEM students’ experiences in a real-world context increases the cultural relevance of STEM lessons in a way that is culturally sustaining. One avenue for bringing these opportunities into the classroom is to engage preservice STEM teachers in authentic citizen science research projects for implementation in their classrooms. The experience of conducting culturally relevant research helps prepare these future teachers to successfully teach underserved minoritized students in HNSDs and serve as leaders in this area. Our next step will be to survey the secondary students of the Noyce scholars in order to investigate student participation in the citizen science projects. Specifically, we intend to investigate secondary students’ experiences and perceptions of citizen science project learning, aspects of the citizen science learning that they enjoyed and/or disliked, STEM skills and content understanding students acquired during the project, and whether participating in a citizen science project contributes to secondary students’ self-identifying as a scientist or STEM professional.

Acknowledgments

The funding for the citizen science project was supported by NSF Awards: DUE 1660615 and 2151061. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Thanks to ARISE blog series editor Marilyn Strutchens for her support of the authors.  Check out her blog, Developing and Sustaining Teacher Leaders, and the other in the teacher leader series: The Rock Cycle as a Metaphor for Developing STEM Teacher Leaders.