Professional Learning Communities in STEM Teacher Preparation

By: Laura Mackey Lorentzen, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair, Biological Sciences, Kean University
Patricia McDermitt, M.A., Lecturer, Elementary Education and PE/Health Education, Kean University
Gail Verdi, Ph.D., Full Professor and Chair, Bilingual Education/TESOL/World Languages, Kean University

Caption: Fall 2024 Kean NSF Noyce CREST Scholar Cohort #1 – Jairo M. Victoriano (Mathematics Education); Deirdre Corbett and Aliyah Wilson (Mathematics Education/Teacher of Students w/Disabilities); Hailey Kassteen (Biology Education); Matthew Velasquez (Biology Education/Teacher of Students w/Disabilities)

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Higher education, in many academic disciplines, maintains professional silos over collaboration. Our university is likely common among others whereby there is a college for STEM and a separate college for education. We have spent this past academic year working to break down silos. Inspired by Eaker & Sells (2015), we seek to do so by employing “the power of the professional learning community concept” (p.28).

What is a PLC? And what is a PLC in STEM education? Our definition is a group of educators who work collaboratively in an ongoing process of collective inquiries and action research to improve student learning experience and outcomes. Our PLC at Kean University is broad in terms of educators, for it includes those in a vertical alignment from teacher candidates to higher education professors.

This blog is intended to serve as a platform for discussion regarding the use of PLCs in STEM teacher preparation for initial licensure, specifically in college teacher preparation programs leading to a bachelor’s degree. Furthermore, we seek to ascertain how PLCs can create an extracurricular opportunity to engage STEM teacher candidates and faculty alike in building a sense of community and cross collaborations in higher education.

NSF Noyce STEM Program (Track 1) at Kean University

Our PLC at Kean University is a product of our five-year National Science Foundation Track 1 Noyce project (DUE 2243328). We recruit college juniors and seniors to be Noyce scholars as they complete their B.A. in either Biology or Mathematical Sciences Education. Our STEM education degree programs afford teaching licensure upon completion of the bachelor’s degree. Our Noyce project provides substantial scholarship monies, guided mentorship, and supportive resources, and in return, requires a commitment to teach upon graduation. See our university’s Noyce website.

Kean is New Jersey’s third largest university, educating students from many communities and recognized as a New Jersey Urban Research University. Most of our Noyce Scholars are first generation college students and/or among those underrepresented in the STEM disciplines. We have reached our target numbers with five scholars in the first cohort and six in the second. Only mathematics and biology education majors applied to be scholars, reflective of the very few majors in chemistry education or earth science education historically at our university.

Launching a STEM Education PLC

Our project leadership team and other faculty from the College of Education and the Hennings College of Science, Mathematics and Technology mentor our scholars. These faculty and the scholars are members of the PLC. During the first year of the project, the leadership team recruited faculty to join the PLC as mentors. Those who volunteered hailed from various departments across both colleges and signed a contract that explained the expectations and responsibilities.

Glaze-Crampes (2020) notes that PLCs in STEM education require a community that is interdisciplinary with a shared goal to impact student learning and outcomes in a positive way and one in which its members forge a culture that may be distinctive from their own field. Not only are there markedly different fields within a single college, but STEM education is typically organized by different subject matter silos within a STEM college. Secondary education majors at our university are housed in the STEM college but only become declared STEM education majors after meeting specific certification requirements through the College of Education. Each candidate must consult with an academic advisor from both colleges to ensure they fulfill STEM subject area requirements, as well as subject area endorsement. Our Noyce project pairs each scholar with two such advisors who are elevated to faculty mentors and collectively members of the PLC.

We promote the PLC as an extracurricular activity. This is described in the contract signed by the scholars and mentors, and it is made clear that active participation is paramount. Lessons learned in Year One was that the faculty mentors craved training on how to be a mentor, recognizing that it is a role that extends beyond that of an academic advisor. Additionally, because PLC sessions are not part of the academic curriculum for the degree, scheduling in-person and remote sessions at convenient times requires effort and flexibility.

Our PLC sessions are not didactic, rather, each member participates and is involved in learning for themselves as well as for their future students. In the 2025-2026 academic year, we will expand the PLC to include the second cohort of scholars and additional faculty mentors. We anticipate transitioning from a PLC trainer-led format to having our first cohort of scholars and faculty mentors take on leadership roles. Such evolution of the PLC member’s role is captured by Glaze-Crampes (2020, p.5).

“Another premise that relates to communities of practice and can be present in individual professional learning communities is the concept of legitimate peripheral participation. The novice, in this case, begins learning on the outer edges of the community and through participation and interaction with experts, becomes a competent member. At the same time, the expert gains a greater understanding through teaching the novice.”

Our first PLC launched in the fall 2024 semester and included the first Noyce scholar cohort, the project leadership team, and other faculty mentors. Acknowledgement and thanks to PLC Trainer and Kean University faculty member, Dr. Alex Guzman, for leading the first-year workshops. During that first session, we developed our purpose, norms, and expectations. The purpose is to foster a sense of supportive community, skills, resources, and opportunities for diverse career collaboration that can enable the training of STEM teachers, equipping individuals with adaptability for modern classrooms in which constructivist pedagogy supports all learners. Established norms ensured open communication and focused on positivity, purpose, and shared commitment to learning. While emphasizing the value each member brings to the PLC, each person in turn is expected to actively participate, attentively listen, and seek guidance and advice from others, all while the PLC trainer helps define roles and prepares individuals for collaboration and leadership. The format for communication among members and the means to ensure focused and productive meetings were major agenda items at the first session. Communication through texts, emails, shared calendar invites and documents was deemed essential alongside a clear purpose defined for each meeting as well as an agenda and a timekeeper to balance action and discussion. Finally, the consensus was to share successes openly to inspire and motivate as well as to offer advice and reflection on setbacks to aid learning and growth.

PLC Book Study on Teaching that Supports All Learners

One purpose of our PLC work is to develop strategies and scaffolds that will enable multilingual learners to acquire math and science content. Therefore, we chose to include a book study based on both research and practical ideas, providing opportunities for both mentors and mentees to consider how to make content more comprehensible. The study focuses on the work of Snyder & Fenner (2021) who describe teaching strategies for multilingual learners–children and youth who are or have been consistently exposed to multiple languages, including languages and varieties of English that employ structures and forms that differ from academic English (Snyder & Fenner, 2021, pp.2-3).

PLC members were asked to read Chapter 1 and to reflect on how constructivist pedagogy aligns with STEM education, in particular, how it focuses on designing learner-centered activities that allow all students to build science, technology, engineering, and mathematical concepts through problem-solving, collaboration, and real-world, hands-on experiences. Our goal is to train preservice STEM teacher candidates to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to scaffold learning that will make content comprehensible for all students (Saad, Garcia, Garcia, 2025). To meet the goals, the PLC follows five guiding principles for what STEM education should be (Snyder & Fenner, 2021):

1. Assets based on valuing students’ home language and culture.
2. Simultaneously support and challenge students.
3. Place students at the center of learning.
4. Leverage all students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
5. Unite all students’ schools, families, and communities.

At our last PLC meeting in May 2025, we created small groups to focus on the five guiding principles developed by Snyder and Fenner. Each small group was assigned a chapter that outlines one of the guiding principles. In the fall 2025 semester, members of each small group will lead the PLC through activities to internalize and analyze the concepts, strategies, and forms of scaffolding that reflect their assigned principle, and how we might use what the authors suggest to reframe the principle within the context of a science or mathematics classroom.

Our PLC also incorporates a seminar series. A meaningful example was a one-hour virtual seminar on best practices for teaching multilingual students led by a Noyce PI from another university in the region. Scholars and faculty learned group activities and strategies to use in the classroom so that all students can investigate a science or math topic no matter their level of thinking and language function inclusive of students who are English-language learners. Relevant resources were provided to the PLC to continue to explore ways that teachers can work toward equal opportunities in STEM education through “supporting students from marginalized communities—and shift their teaching to create opportunities and disrupt inequities” (Fowler and Bell, 2025).

Reflections on Year 1 of the Noyce PLC

To gain a sense of how comfortable PLC members feel about using/following a set of principles that support students from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences, we administered a modified version of a survey developed by Siwatu (2007) and designed to gauge preservice teachers’ beliefs regarding their self-efficacy in using teaching strategies that are fair and supportive of all students. All 14 PLC members completed the survey. Our modified survey included 40 competencies on a Likert scale from 0 to 10 (0 meaning not at all, and 10 meaning the participant felt extremely confident in their self-efficacy). The key findings of our data reveal an overall mean of 6.9, indicating that participants’ confidence in their self-efficacy ranges between moderate-to-high confidence across the 40 items (see Appendix A for Questions 1 through 40 descriptors).

Several of the self-reported strengths noted by PLC members fall within the general descriptor of Instructional Strategies (using prior knowledge (Q14), varying assessments (Q7), using student interests (Q38), using cooperative learning (Q39), and building relationships and trust (Q9)). Our data also reveals several opportunities for growth. For example, most of the lowest scores were primarily Relational in nature (communicating with parents of multilingual learners (MLLs) (Q31 & Q24), structuring non-intimidating parent-teacher conferences (Q25), praising multilingual learners in native language (Q22), and creating classroom displays that reflect all students (Q19).

The data collected also provides us with opportunities for upcoming professional development sessions.  For example, we might consider sessions on Family Engagement (parent-friendly updates, conference playbooks), Developing Forms of Scaffolding for STEM Students (Integrating Student Interests and Language Supports and Co-Creating Norms with students), Analyzing Assessments and Curriculum (audit tests for bias, constructivist STEM exemplars, and revising materials for representation). Finally, we will employ a different strategy for collecting data for the 2025-26 academic year. First, we will administer the survey to the incoming second scholar cohort (#2) in September to see how they self-report on their self-efficacy prior to participating in PLC activities. Then we will administer the same survey to cohort #2 as well as to the returning PLC members at the end of the academic year to see if there are differences in confidence scores. This strategy will likely provide us with a more realistic range of data sets to analyze.

One PLC member reflected on the year’s experience: “Each meeting is a steppingstone to the next; sometimes we go off track, a teachable moment arises, or we stay focused on the topic at hand. We are experiencing firsthand how professional learning communities offer a powerful framework for educators, and those who are educators-in-training to work together to continuously improve their practice. What we are seeing, to paraphrase Serviss (2022), is that the more minds that come together from different backgrounds, the more likely you are to add value and purpose to the field of education.”

According to Fisher et al., (2020), working toward collective efficacy, taking responsibility for learning, and being flexible in instructional practices can transform a PLC from being purely additive to being transformative. We are only in the middle of our Noyce project, having finished year two of our five-year grant. However, the Noyce program has created a meaningful opportunity for all participants to gain insight and growth through one year’s active participation in a professional learning community. Recruiting a balanced mixture of junior and senior faculty across multiple departments and colleges who view their participation as an important service to the university community is key. Providing them with resources and training on what mentorship entails is central to effective engagement.

In no small way, the time spent in the PLC has humanized each of us, such that regardless of our degree earned (faculty), or not yet earned (student scholars), we know we all love STEM and teaching it!  Not only have our scholars learned from their faculty mentors and fellow scholars, but so have the faculty enhanced their own knowledge through interactions with the scholars in these outside-of-classroom engagements. Perhaps Eaker & Sells (2015) say it best, “PLC is at heart, a way of thinking, an organization’s culture, with shared collective beliefs, attitudes and habits that constitute norms” (p.23). Kean’s PLC is expanding on the notion of student learning, as we, the “educators-in-training” scholars and the faculty, are learning from each other. And we do so, not in the silos of our respective departments or colleges, but rather across such boundaries.

In closing, we will need to address the sustainability of the PLC as a bridge between the College of Education and the STEM college, both with shared responsibility for STEM education. Implementing productive strategies is at the forefront of our aims for the upcoming years of the project. We have published a Noyce Newsletter, distributed across all departments in both colleges to describe our shared goal of training STEM teachers. Much more needs to be done to build awareness of our PLC at Kean and gain recognition for our work to break down silos—it must be a campus priority.