Innovative Program Aims to Improve Teaching

Innovative Program Aims to Improve Teaching

BY LIA UNRAU
Rice News Staff
December 9, 1999

In a collaboration aimed at strengthening relationships between universities and communities, Rice University, University of Houston (UH) and UH-Downtown are teaming with the Houston Independent School District (HISD) to exchange knowledge and teaching skills.

Rice University received a three-year, $1,373,900 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop fellowships as part of the NSF Graduate Teaching Fellows in Kindergarten-12 Education (GK-12) program.

The innovative educational program will allow talented graduate students and advanced undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering and technology to serve as teaching fellows in K-12 schools, teaming them with master and novice school teachers.

Kathleen Matthews, dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, is the principal investigator on the grant, and Fred Rudolph, chair of biochemistry and cell biology and the Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, and Richard Tapia, the Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics, are co-principal investigators.

“We are very excited about this program and believe that it will provide unique opportunities for our students and simultaneously enrich the educational environment at Rice and in Houston,” Matthews said.

“The current national crisis in K-12 education requires participation from institutions of higher education and involvement from our students and faculty,” she said. “Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley has called for just such involvement: ‘To prepare the next generation of teachers we must turn to the presidents of our great colleges and universities for leadership’ in launching innovative programs. To encourage such participation, the National Science Foundation now includes K-12 teaching initiatives in the program grants it awards.”

Designated as GK-12 fellows, the students in Rice’s program will become part of seven four-member teams that will work together in Houston middle schools over a 15-month fellowship period to share content knowledge and teaching skills.

The graduate and undergraduate students will have a high amount of knowledge and familiarity with the science and mathematics content to be taught and will help bring the knowledge levels up in new teachers who may not have an extensive background in these areas. The master teachers will share teaching expertise with all team members.

The program will give students valuable experience in the classroom and the fellows will serve as role models for middle school students. It provides K-12 teachers with an exceptional professional development opportunity and their students with enriched instruction in science and mathematics, at the same time preparing graduate and undergraduate students to support K-12 education in their future careers.

“One benefit to the students is that they will gain experience breaking down complex concepts so that novice learners can understand them, a skill that will benefit the fellows in any teaching environment,” said Nanda Kirkpatrick, director of precollege science education programs at Rice.

There exists a real push to create more partnerships between higher education and K-12 to try to improve science and mathematics teaching, she said.

“We expect many professors will go on to be professors and work in industry, probably continuing in science and engineering areas, but because of this experience they will know how to interact with K-12 teachers in a meaningful way,” Kirkpatrick said.

According to Kirkpatrick, some 30 percent to 50 percent of novice teachers drop out of teaching in the first five years. “This program will be of incredible benefit to the novice teacher,” she said. “They will have the advantage of interacting with a master teacher as well as the content knowledge of the graduate and undergraduate students.”

Fellows will be selected in the spring and the fellowships will begin in May with an intensive seminar led by Kirkpatrick, Cynthia Lanius, associate director of education, outreach and training in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, and Anne Papakonstantinou, executive director of the Rice University School Mathematics Project.

Students will participate in a three-month teacher enhancement program over the summer and begin work with the teacher teams in August. After spending an entire academic year working with their teacher teammates, GK-12 fellows serve as instructors in the teacher enhancement programs during the last three months of their fellowship.

Teams also will design a two-semester project that involves the middle school students of the participating teachers.

In addition to their time on K-12 campuses, fellows will participate in a weekly seminar on precollege science and mathematics educational reform.

Applications for graduate students interested in participating in the program are due Jan. 14. Undergraduate applications are due March 15. For more information contact Kirkpatrick at (713) 349-1800, Ext. 344, and at kpat@rice.edu.