Assessing the Impacts of the First Five Years of School of Rock On-Board and On-Shore Professional Development Program for Educators: Lessons for Other Teacher Professional Development Programs
Abstract
School of Rock (SoR) is an immersive professional development program run by the Deep Earth Academy (DEA) of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. The program offers formal and informal educators an opportunity to utilize the laboratories, cores, smear slides, and other data on the JOIDES Resolution research vessel and Texas A&M Gulf Coast Repository to investigate Earth science topics aligned with the IODP science goals. Participants acquire content and skills through inquiry explorations facilitated by scientist instructors and lab technicians, and are exposed to the culture of onshore and offshore science by interacting with experts from a range of scientific and non-scientific disciplines. Since 2005, the School of Rock program has hosted over 60 participants from 33 states and four countries. Several of the SoR programs had on-board experiences, while others were held on-shore at the IODP's Gulf Coast Repository. The participant demographics varied in each cohort as did some of science content focus and pedagogical approach. To assess the impact of the SoR experience on participants and their classrooms, and inform DEA about how to proceed with future SoR programs, past participants recently completed two online surveys. Data were analyzed in the context of three guiding questions: What important qualities have been consistent across the years?, What are some key differences between the SoR programs?, What are the key differences between shore-based and onboard experiences?. Additionally, participants documented the number of activities they developed, workshops given, and other efforts that share their SoR experience with their respective audiences. The survey results and ensuing discussions with a focus group of program participants representing each of the cohorts suggest to our surprise, that participants in on-shore experiences were similarly satisfied and enthusiastic about their learning experience as those that participated in shipboard SoRs, even though differences in the immersion environment exist between SoR program conducted shipboard and onshore repository. Results also indicate that access to data, engagement in high level inquiry-based activities, and access to scientists contributed to their highly ranked professional development experience, as well as to their continued engagement and transfer of knowledge post-program. A strong commonality between cohorts is that all participants (100%) incorporate ocean drilling related STEM content and science process skills into their classroom instruction as a result of the experience. Finally, the collaborative nature of scientific research made a strong impression on the participants, and is among the critical science process skills that they take back to their classroom and informal audiences.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFMED33C..05C
- Keywords:
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- 0830 EDUCATION / Teacher training;
- 0840 EDUCATION / Evaluation and assessment;
- 0850 EDUCATION / Geoscience education research