Impact on Teachers of IISME's Summer Fellowship
Program. Each year, IISME has done follow-up surveys
of its participants, asking them to assess how the IISME
program has changed them professionally and personally.
Some of the results:
- More than 90% of responding Fellows report that
the SFP is one of the best professional
development experiences available to them.
- Attitudinal gains are ranked as the most
important outcomes of participation. Fellows
state that the experience restores their
enthusiasm for teaching and boosts their
professional self-confidence.
- The most commonly reported instructional outcomes
are teacher-initiated changes in the areas of
career counseling, teacher content knowledge,
access to industry resources, and the development
of student lessons in process skills (team work,
oral and written presentations, problem solving,
etc.).
- Fellows also attest to the value of the ongoing
opportunities to build a supportive, collegial
community of learners.
Qualitative Data about Impact on Teachers of SWEPTs
Nationally. SWEPTs have, for years, documented
program activities and assessed teachers' and, in some
cases, mentors' reactions via self-report surveys,
interviews, and staff observations during visits to
fellowship sites. These studies have documented that
SWEPTs more than meet teachers' expectations. They
provide case studies showing that teachers make sincere
efforts to implement in their classrooms the
technologies, team approaches, and hands-on participatory
approaches to working and learning they have experience
in university/industry/government research laboratories
and other organizational settings.
Quantitative Data about Impact on Students of
Columbia University's SWEPT. Acknowledging the big
gap between qualitative data about the effects on
teachers and quantitative data about the positive effects
on students and their schools, Dr. Samuel Silverstein and
Mr. Jay Dubner, Director and Program Coordinator,
respectively, of www.Columbia
University's SWEPT, initiated a study of the effects
of Columbia's program on high-school students in the
classrooms of participating teachers.
Through partnerships forged with the New York City
Board of Education and school administrators,
Columbiaís program has obtained data on
attendance, Westinghouse project participation, science
club participation, grade-point average, science course
pass rates, and the pass rates and scores on standardized
tests (New York State Regents' Examination) of 96,000 New
York City public high-school students.
The data were obtained from two groups of students: 1)
About 6,500 students in classes of participating teachers
during the year prior to the teacher's acceptance into
Columbia's program and following the teachers' first and
second years as program participants (Columbia's program
requires teachers to participate for eight weeks in each
of two consecutive summers). 2) About 90,000 students in
classes of all non-participating science teachers in the
same schools at which program participants teach and in
the same years.
One measure of success was the attendance rate of the
students. The preliminary analysis of the data indicates
the first group increased from 76% (year prior to teacher
participation) to 82% (after first year) to 90% (after
second year); the corresponding percentages for the
second group remained fairly constant, going from 74% to
76% to 77%.
A second measure of success was the student engagement
in Westinghouse projects. In the first group, preliminary
data indicate the number of students participating
increased by a factor of nine in this period. In the
second group, there was negligible change.
A third measure of success was the student involvement
in science clubs. In the first group, preliminary data
indicate the percentage more than doubled during the
period. In the second group, there was negligible change.
Quantitative Data about Impact of SWEPTs
Nationally. The NSF has just funded a planning grant
to IISME, Columbia's program and five other SWEPTs to
plan a 5-year quantitative study on student outcomes of
SWEPTs nationally.
