K-12 Education and Teacher Preparation

Science education is particularly at risk from the growing national trend towards alternatives to traditional public schools, such as charter schools, private schools, vouchers, and home schooling. Arizona leads the nation in these trends with 225 school districts, 944 public schools, 289 charter schools, 353 private schools, and some 13,500 home-schooled children. Many of these districts and schools are small and are located in rural areas. Alternative schools are characterized by small numbers of students, stretched resources, and few science departments. Through the Center we have an opportunity to greatly amplify ongoing efforts and facilitate the delivery of better resources to each of these groups. Both content and instruction will align with the recommendations for science teachers in the National Science Education Standards ?, Professional Standards for the Teaching of Mathematics ? and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy ?. One pioneering effort in this regard is the international GLOBE program, in which over 2700 schools in 70 countries collect and report scientific observations on meteorology, hydrology, soils, and land cover. The GLOBE hydrology (Bales, Conklin) and soil-moisture (Washburne) science teams are based at the UA, and the UA investigators are active in training teachers to be GLOBE participants. This GLOBE connection provides the Center with an excellent avenue to reach schools across the world.

Courses for Pre- and In-service Science Teachers
Bales, Conklin, Luft

An undergraduate course built around the Center’s theme will be developed and offered for pre-service elementary teachers. This course will use water issues as a unifying theme to integrate key concepts in mathematics and science. The course content will not only educate teachers, but provide them with material that is applicable to K-8 settings. The same integrated mathematics and science course with hydrology as the focus will be offered in evenings, weekends, or summer for in-service elementary and secondary science teachers to assist their learning of hydrology, issues surrounding water, and inquiry-based instruction. A broader Earth system science course was offered at night to this audience in 1996 (Bales, McConnell) and it was very well received, but was discontinued for lack of funds. As an extension to the proposed university course, teachers will have the opportunity to participate in full GLOBE training. This will prepare them to begin a regular program of environmental observations and investigations once they return to their classrooms.

Summer Field-based Research Opportunities for K-12 Science Teachers
Colodner, Goodrich, Graumlich, Luft

Teachers will have the opportunity to participate in research projects with Center scientists. Consistent with new standards for professional development ?, teachers will be expected to take their experience and transform one idea into a research project that informs their colleagues about the practice of hydrology or inquiry-based instruction. Each teacher will receive 3-6 units of graduate credit and will be supervised by both a scientist and an education faculty member. Many of our agency collaborators already have or will have field or lab-based internship programs for teachers, which place a teacher alongside a practicing scientist/mentor for 2-8 weeks. A keystone in this effort will be a new summer Earth system science investigation for teachers at the Biosphere 2 Center. For two weeks, a select group of teachers will work with scientists to investigate the water budget within three environmentally distinct B2C habitats. In order to extend the impact of this experience and provide a framework for transferring this knowledge to students, teachers will be offered full GLOBE training.

Dissemination of Curriculum Material
Washburne, Woodard

We propose to join forces with water resource research centers and county extension offices throughout the Southwest to deliver more focused water resources materials and to assist teachers and students. This will be accomplished in part through a water resources clearinghouse that will: (i) produce and update a resource catalog on the many existing, relevant curriculum materials (audience is K-12 teachers and librarians); (ii) establish teacher resource centers in cooperation with local cooperative extension offices throughout the Southwest; (iii) train teachers to use available water resource curriculum materials using master teachers plus GLOBE; and (iv) translate selected curriculum materials into Spanish for use in Mexico and in bilingual programs. The Center will also hold a water workshop for teachers and faculty in conjunction with the SAMEC, which attracts over 100 Arizona science teachers to UA in February of each year for professional development. Broader dissemination of information will be through web pages, presentations at national and local conferences, and GLOBE. Locally, we will work with the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), using it as a convenient test bed for curricular materials. TUSD, which has just been awarded $5 million over five years by NSF under the Local Systemic Change Initiative (LSCI) Program, is the leading K-12 educational organization in Tucson with over 62,000 students (95-96 data: 45% Anglo, 40% Hispanic, 15% other minorities). Through connections to TUSD, the Center will have an ideal opportunity to dramatically influence water resource-related curricula through seminars for master teachers and by promoting mentoring relationships between teachers and university students

(see, e.g. http://student.biology.arizona.edu/sciconn/).

Minority Outreach
Lindner, Medville, Washburne

Science teacher education on Native American lands is a priority because of Native Americans’ vulnerability to water shortages and a growing need to manage Indian water rights. Collaborations with minority-serving organizations will be coordinated by the Science and Mathematics Learning Center (SMLC) at Northern Arizona University. SMLC personnel will support workshops, teacher training, and student-based activities. One opportunity to reach 30 Native American and Hispanic students interested in natural resource careers is the Minority Outreach, Recruitment, and Employment (MORE) Eagle Peak Summer camp; the coordinating agency is the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Another program, the American Indian Environmental Health Science Community Outreach Program (AIEHS-COP) at ASU reaches Native American communities throughout the Southwest with community-orientated science education outreach. The Center will collaborate with them to deliver a wide range of hydrology-orientated K-14 training and support.