51情报站's Center for Educational Partnerships (TCEP) received a prestigious Programs that Work award from the Virginia Mathematics and Science Coalition for the program Knowledge through Experience for Youth in Science (KEYS). The award recognizes exemplary mathematics, science, and integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs for which there is evidence of a positive impact on student or teacher learning. This year, twelve recipients were selected and honored in a January 15th ceremony at the Library of Virginia. This is the second Programs that Work award for TCEP, which was recognized in 2018 for the program Building Bridges across the Elementary Curriculum Using Argument Driven Inquiry. Both programs involved partnerships with Hampton Roads school divisions.
The KEYS program was a three year teacher professional development program for 112 middle school science teachers serving more than 13,000 students in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, York County, and Isle of Wight Public Schools. It involved summer institutes and one-credit courses at Tidewater Community College, as well as Saturday workshops held in field investigation sites around the region. The program targeted four goals through the provision of professional development and instructional coaching. It sought to:
- Increase teachers' content knowledge of scientific concepts and skills aligned with the Virginia Standards of learning, through college level science instruction.
- Increase teachers' understanding of scientific inquiry and argumentation methods by utilizing the Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI) instructional model.
- Increase teachers' opportunities for professional networking and collegial support.
- Facilitate administrator support for the implementation of the new instructional model.
Program deliverables also included a suite of classroom materials for teaching topics such as watersheds, human activity and ecosystems, photosynthesis, populations, energy transfer, and conservation of matter. At the conclusion of the program, the investigations were presented to the Virginia Department of Education for statewide distribution.
To be eligible for the Programs that Work award, programs must demonstrate their effectiveness. In addition to providing evidence of teachers' ability to form scientific arguments and use the ADI instructional model, KEYS participation was associated with significant gains in science content knowledge for more than 60% of participating teachers. The project was funded by a grant from the Virginia Department of Education Mathematics and Science Partnership program.