Enhancing STEM Teacher Preparation through Knowledge Communities

• In Event: Invisible Colleges: Small Group Spaces for Growth, Inquiry, Healing, and Repair

Abstract

Background: teachHOUSTON is a collaboration between the colleges of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Education along with local school districts that graduates diverse STEM teachers with solid content knowledge for enhancing student learning, where annually, 90% of the graduates enter teaching. Of these, 95% are teaching in the Greater Houston Area, with an estimated 80% teaching in high-need schools. Moreover, 88% of these teachers continue beyond 5 years which is leading to changing the face of regional public education. Central to the success of teachHOUSTON program, is the way in which teachHOUSTON, STEM and Education faculty utilized their individual expertise to worked together since 2010 as a knowledge community to pursue and acquire federal grants in support of scholarships and programming, to create, revise and expand the program’s inquiry-based curriculum to include culturally responsive teaching practices, and to provide induction support to graduates for the first two years of their teaching career.

Purpose: The purpose of this narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992, 2000) is to examine the impact of the knowledge community formed among teachHOUSTON faculty and how this served as a springboard to increasing the preparation and retention of STEM teachers.

Perspective: Knowledge communities serve as ways for individuals or entities to share knowledge in support of obtaining a common goal. For teachHOUSTON, a university-based secondary STEM teacher preparation program established in 2007, building knowledge communities (Author11, 1995) has been essential for team growth and development for providing an academic foundation and for understanding and generating new knowledge on how to prepare and support future STEM teachers around commonplaces of experience (Lane, 1988).

Method: The research genre we employ is narrative inquiry, which occurs within a “three-dimensional narrative inquiry space,” allows for an investigation which is “inward, outward, backward, forward, and situated within the place” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 49). Data was gathered qualitatively through focus group and individual interviews. Three modes of interpretive tools were utilized to support the narrative inquiry including broadening, burrowing, and storying and restorying (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) and analyzed through the lens of knowledge communities characteristics as outlined by Author11 (2007).

Findings: Findings indicate that the knowledge community formed within teachHOUSTON provided a safe collaborative place to enhance programming, solve problems, and create new pathways for STEM teacher preparation/induction. As conversations continue within the knowledge community, it is anticipated that further innovation will occur. Central to the success of teachHOUSTON is the way in which faculty work together to enhance and innovate the program through federal grants, STEM teacher preparation leadership endeavors, and numerous publications. Building knowledge communities (Author11, 1995) is essential to team growth and development as we seek to support, understand, and generate new knowledge in how we prepare and support future STEM teachers around our commonplaces of experience (Lane, 1988).

Significance: The significance of this collaborative knowledge community is that it has fostered an increase in STEM teacher production and retention. Moreover, as a product of this collaborative effort, it has become its own invisible college.

Authors

• Paige K. Evans, University of Houston

• Donna W. Stokes, University of Houston

• Karen E. McIntush, University of Houston

• Karla Adelina Garza, University of Houston