Keys to Finding and Building Effective Teacher-Researcher Collaborations While Maximizing the Impact on Students Learning STEM Concepts
Abstract
Over the past eight years I have been fortunate enough to work with several researchers and their field teams. These experiences have given me insights and a deeper understanding of what makes collaborations more successful, while enriching my students and their STEM education. As in any positive relationship, establishing a two-way line of open communications is just the beginning. This is closely followed by having both parties set clear expectations and goals for the field experience as well as for the planning leading up to the field work and post activities to be developed for outreach purposes to the students and the general public. All of my students know a scientist, and have worked with data from the field.
Of course finding a researcher to work with is the first step. Researchers have limited time along with logistics, budgets and safety constraints, and educators face similar restrictions from the institutions they work for. Beginning with local universities and/or research facilities is one good way to get started in identifying potential connections. Even grad students and lab techs can be great sources for classroom visits and mentorships, when the researcher has limited time. I have set up my students to be mentored by grad and undergrad students for several years and have great success with this! I will also address various ways to measure or evaluate the effectiveness of such collaborations on classrooms and communities, for both the researcher and educator. Beyond looking at numbers of students involved and hours contributed, there are many broader results when researchers go on to involve themselves with additional outreach opportunities, committing more time and money to education and more students. In my case as an educator, I was named 2013 Teacher of the Year (TOTY) in Orange County, California and a top 10 TOTY for the state. In 2017 I was recognized in Washington D.C. at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with the "Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators", all of which, and more, was a direct result of my outreach work with supportive researchers and their teams. I will share some of the ways my students have interacted with lessons learned in the field. I feel my students have had unique opportunities to engage in STEM activities as applied to the Geosciences that they will remember always.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMED24A..04W
- Keywords:
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- 0799 General or miscellaneous;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0840 Evaluation and assessment;
- EDUCATION