Lessons Learned From The Implementation Of A Gk12 Grant Outreach Program

This paper describes the lessons learned from the implementation of a National Science Foundation GK-12 grant in North Carolina Public Schools. Nine engineering students, both undergraduate and graduate, have worked with two elementary schools and one middle school as science, math, and technology resources and co-teachers. They have worked with over 1500 elementary and middle school students and over 100 teachers to date. Introduction The outreach program at the College of Engineering at NC State includes a GK-12 grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at using engineering students from the university level to enhance math, science and technology instruction. The grant was written and put in place as a response to two perceived problems. First, national reports indicate that U. S. students in K-12 schools currently lag behind their peers in other countries in math and science achievement. And second, recruitment efforts directed toward women have stagnated for many Colleges of Engineering at a mere twenty percent of incoming classes for the past several years. The problem seems to lie at the time when students are making decisions about their careers. Most students decide as early as middle-school but primarily during high-school. Outreach efforts are usually directed at these ages, but the expected increase in interested students does not occur. These phenomena point to a need to change traditional methods at both the university and K-12 levels. We have chosen to implement this grant at the elementary and early middle school level. The original grant proposal included four goals: • Integration of science, technology and engineering topics with math, reading and writing • Encouragement of underrepresented groups in science, math, engineering and technology (SMET) through role models and particular teaching techniques • Teaching SMET content to diverse populations, including hearing-impaired students, students for whom English is a second language, and others P ge 684.1 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Copyright 2001, American Society for Engineering Education. • Adaptation of SMET content to different learning styles Participants in the program have realized that the success of these goals is dependent on the achievement of some additional, less obvious goals: • Encouraging teachers to teach science at some depth, even though students are assessed on math and reading, but not science The State of North Carolina administers end of grade tests to students in every grade from third through twelfth. These tests measure competency in math, reading comprehension and writing. If a student fails to pass any portion of the tests, he or she is in danger of being retained at the present grade level. If a certain percentage of students passes the tests, teachers can receive a monetary bonus, while if a greater than certain percentage fails, the principal may be subject to losing her/his job. The stakes are high for both teachers and students. Science has no place on this playing field. If a teacher includes science lessons, the temptation is to skirt the surface of a subject, as teaching it at depth takes research, time and a certain level of comfort. • Finding a way to convince teachers and university personnel to behave as collaborative colleagues who each bring different, valuable skills to the problem at hand Teachers in a university town are accustomed to guests from the university community coming in to schools to give brief lessons/lectures on certain subjects. Almost without exception, these visitors are asked in as experts on a certain subject, but are assumed to have little or no knowledge of matters of education. This is a phenomenon particularly seen at the elementary and middle school levels. The traditional relationship between teachers and university personnel is usually not one of equals. If a program aims to have long-term impact on the way that science is taught, the collaborating parties must establish a collaborative relationship. In order for this to take place, both sides must recognize themselves as equal partners. Otherwise, change is resisted and, usually, is not possible. • Translating weekly classroom visits to the type of interaction that will have a measurable long term impact on the students, teachers and the school, including how science is looked upon and how it is taught The temptation of this type of program is to simply send university students into the classroom to teach science lessons, albeit including hands-on activities, that enhance current teaching. This may have impact on student learning, but it is unlikely to have long-term impact on science teaching and attitudes unless careful attention is given to planning and integration with the teacher. In addition, the activities are unlikely to yield long-term empowerment of the students unless they contain an inquiry-based component. Simply duplicating an activity that has been outlined, and maybe demonstrated to them, may not impact how students view science as a subject. P ge 684.2 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Copyright 2001, American Society for Engineering Education. Several hypotheses are evident in the selection of these goals for an “outreach” program, which might better be termed a “long-term recruitment” program. The central one is that, although kids may decide on future careers at the high school level, they will not choose a career in science or engineering if they have failed to develop a love and/or appreciation for science, math and technology at the age when they decide what they are good at and what they like to do. THIS age is elementary school, probably grades three through five. Part of the assessment of this program establishes data to support this idea. A program in Canada has already assessed 15,000 students and suggested the same result. These then became the enhanced set of goals for the NSF Engineering Fellows program. To measure the success of these goals, we had to enhance our set of rubrics originally outlined in the grant proposal as well. Data were collected in the form of surveys given to students, parents and teachers at the beginning of the year. The student and parent surveys were repeated at the end of the school year, as well. The percentages of students scoring at or above grade level on end of grade tests were recorded, as math and general problem-solving skills were part of the GK-12 curriculum. In addition, numbers of students participating in voluntary events like the science fair and the science answer box were recorded. The results of these assessment tools from year one of the grant will be discussed in the rest of the paper. The NC State program operated at one elementary school in year one, but a similar, collaborating program at Duke University operated at another elementary school. They used a similar survey, providing some data for comparison. Results from student surveys The student surveys were designed to be given to any student in grades K-5, so that all students could be given the same survey. (The middle school survey was slightly more complicated, but contained the elementary survey as a subset for comparison purposes. Middle school data is not yet available.) Since kindergarteners cannot read, the survey used short, simple questions that could be read out by the teacher and graphic smiling and frowning faces for the students to indicate their answers. Teachers and assistants were asked to help the students make sure they knew what questions were asking, without suggesting an answer. The first part of the survey consisted of four questions: 1. Is science fun? 2. Is science something you use all the time? 3. How often do you use science (every day, every month, every week, one or two times a year)? 4. Are you good at science? The second part consisted of ten pictures, of which the students were asked to mark the ones they thought were scientists (see Figure 1). In actuality, the pictures are all of scientists.