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In an article about preparing future faculty, Ann Austin (2002) recommends that graduate students aspiring to be faculty be provided with opportunities to work with mentors, exploring how curricular choices are made, how learning occurs in their field, and how to address difficulties that arise in the classroom or laboratory. But doctoral students who intend to become teacher-scholars typically have little opportunity for systematic professional development as teachers; many complete their doctoral studies without ever having taught a class, taken an education course, or had any sort of organized opportunity to develop their teaching skills. Although some serve as teaching assistants, such positions more commonly aim to meet institutional needs rather than to provide professional-development opportunities for TAs. Without systematic preparation for teaching, doctoral students may never have the opportunity to think deeply about teaching and learning until they interview for their first faculty position—or until they find themselves struggling as new assistant professors.
The GK-12 Program
A number of national studies in recent years have called for doctoral-education reform, with particular attention paid to preparing prospective faculty to become skilled educators. One response has been the Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) program, initiated in 1999 by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This fellowship program supports colleges and universities in integrating K-12 teaching experiences into the education of graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM disciplines). Since the inception of the program, NSF has provided over 5,600 fellowships to graduate students at 151 universities and colleges throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. According to Sonia Ortega, NSF’s GK-12 program director, these fellows have worked with over a half-million schoolchildren. (Locations of current and alumni projects are shown on a website developed and maintained by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in support of the GK-12 program, at http://www.gk12.org/map.php. Institutions that grant masters or doctoral degrees in STEM disciplines supported by the NSF and are interested in applying for GK-12 funding can find the program solicitation at http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf07555.)
NSF’s aim in funding GK-12 fellowships is not for graduate students to become K-12 teachers. Instead, NSF wants to provide science and engineering graduate students with “an opportunity to acquire additional skills that will broadly prepare them for professional and scientific careers in the 21st century” (NSF, 2007, p.6), to bring current science into K-12 classrooms, and to strengthen partnerships between schools and universities.
Cornell University was in the first cohort of institutions to receive GK-12 funding, with the Cornell Science Inquiry Partnerships (CSIP) program offering fellowships to 8-11 graduate students a year from 2000 through 2006. The fellowships were highly competitive—up to 60 qualified graduate students competed each year for 10 fellowships. The fellows specialized in disciplines ranging from engineering to sociology and worked with 6th- through 12th-graders—from at-risk to advanced placement—in biology, chemistry, earth science, physics, and environmental science. Regardless of discipline, the common aim was to engage students in scientific research and other forms of inquiry-based learning.
Working with partner teachers, CSIP fellows determined where and how inquiry projects could help meet class-specific needs and enhance established curricula. Fellows typically introduced themselves to their classes through interactive “meet-the-scientist” presentations designed to engage their pupils in some aspect of their research. In some classes, fellows facilitated student-designed research projects or led “nature-of-science” activities to help their students understand how scientists study the natural world. In classes with rigid curricular requirements, the fellows redesigned traditional lessons to teach required topics using a more inquiry-based approach. Meanwhile, the fellows participated in a year-long seminar in which they explored strategies for guiding students of various achievement levels in inquiry-based learning, reviewed key aspects of educational theory and practice, and reflected on their teaching experiences.
Learning to Teach
Based on his own career and those of other teaching faculty, Peter Kugel (1993) describes a series of stages through which educators typically progress in learning how to teach (Table 1). Initially, educators focus on themselves and their role in the classroom, worrying about how they will survive and whether they will be accepted by their students. Gradually they progress to greater focus on coverage of the subject matter. Finally, those who become highly proficient focus on the students as independent learners and try to help them develop interests and skills for lifelong learning.
Many faculty first begin traversing this path when launching their careers as assistant professors, although surely their panic could be reduced and their initial teaching results be improved if they had begun to progress along this continuum while still in graduate school. GK-12 fellowships provide one way in which graduate students can begin learning to teach in a well-scaffolded environment. All those receiving GK-12 fellowships spend 10 hours per week working as science-teaching partners in K-12 classrooms and at least another five hours preparing to do so. Although the details of execution differ from site to site, all of the programs offer structured opportunities for graduate students to work side by side with experienced teachers and to reflect on their teaching experiences.
Teaching and Learning Results
Some in the science-education community are skeptical about the potential for GK-12 fellowships to help prepare graduate students for college-level teaching. For example, a proposal submitted for a presentation at a science-education research conference received this comment from a reviewer:
There is a very poor match between intended outcomes (university teaching of adults) and process (paying
pre-service university faculty to assist secondary teachers to teach secondary students). There is a large difference
in teaching, content and learning requirements, and outcomes between the two worlds. The vast majority of
the students and content will never be taught as a faculty member at the university level. Why not design a
program of professional development, courses, clinicals, working with the level of student and content the
graduate students will be responsible for? This is like preparing auto mechanics to repair Fords by having
them help teenagers fix tri-cycles.
But that skepticism is apt to give way when faculty have direct experience with the program. As the director of the Cornell Science Inquiry Partnerships (CSIP), I not only witnessed first-hand the effects of the GK-12 teaching experiences on participating graduate students, I also sought the perspectives of their faculty advisors through year-end interviews. Ninety-two percent of CSIP faculty advisors credited the fellowship with enhancing their advisees’ teaching skills, and 52 percent rated it more valuable to their advisees' career than a typical campus teaching assistantship.
Participating graduate students agreed. The students’ responses to questionnaires administered at the end of each fellowship year indicated significant self-perceived growth in both their ability to teach through inquiry and their understanding of techniques for curriculum development and the assessment of student learning. The graduate students’ passion for and skill in teaching, as they worked intensively to bring contemporary science and inquiry-based projects into secondary-level classrooms, were increased through a variety of means. Some fellows worked closely with their partner teachers, benefitting from their mentors’ experience in developing, teaching, and evaluating lessons. Others worked more independently but received feedback from teachers about their work. All of the fellows participated in a weekly campus seminar in which they discussed science-education literature in the context of their own teaching.
It turns out that another advantage for graduate students who engage in middle- and high-school teaching is the enhancement of their own learning. Many of the fellows at Cornell commented on this benefit. For example, one stated, “It has been excellent for me to think about the scientific process. My advisor will tell you, as a result, I am framing my questions in a much clearer fashion and answering them more directly and logically.” Another said,
I have gained confidence as a scientist. I ask clearer questions and find cleaner answers as a result of articulating
the process to kids. I also am more aware of the context for the research I do. Finally, my sense of self, as both a
teacher and a scientist, has been strengthened by this experience!
Nationwide evaluation of the GK-12 program concluded in 2005 mirrored our findings at Cornell. Among the strongest impacts were the improved communication and teaching skills of fellows. Ninety-three percent of fellows and 90 percent of their partner teachers reported that the fellows’ teaching skills had improved “somewhat” or “greatly/significantly” as a result of their GK-12 activities. Faculty mentors concurred, mentioning in particular the increased self-confidence and heightened sensitivity of the fellows to different learning styles. The evaluation also documented a perceived increase in the content knowledge of teachers, the provision of positive role models for K-12 students, and the strengthening of school/university relationships.
Of course, the ultimate test of the fellows’ increased teaching effectiveness would be the detection of positive effects on student learning. Ninety-one percent of teachers responding to the nationwide GK-12 survey reported that the fellows provided enriched learning experiences and opportunities for their students, with 86 percent citing increased learning of content and 95 percent mentioning increased enjoyment of learning. However, middle- and high-school student learning gains have not been directly assessed. The design of such a study would be extremely challenging, because students are not randomly assigned to treatment groups; no suitable comparison group is likely to exist; and the work of the fellows varies greatly in terms of grade level, subject matter, and teaching goals and strategies.
Program-evaluation results also provide a response to the criticism that, given the difference between high-school and college teaching, the GK-1 program “is like preparing auto mechanics to repair Fords by having them help teenagers fix tri-cycles.” A 2007 survey of CSIP alumni asked if they had taught undergraduate or graduate students since completing their fellowship, and if so, whether their GK-12 experiences had in any way influenced that teaching. Twenty-six of the 32 alumni fellows who had subsequently taught at the college level described the positive impacts of their GK-12 fellowships on that experience. The following responses describe some of the ways in which the alumni fellows thought their teaching was stronger as a result of the program:
• “CSIP has taught me to cherish the natural inquisitiveness of my students and use that to guide their ability to teach themselves, rather than ‘spoon-feed’ the knowledge directly.”
• “I’ve become much more self-reflective about my teaching, always trying to gauge the interest level of the students. I’ve tried to focus more on how the students were learning and adapt my teaching techniques to that, rather than the other way around. My approach has also become more inquiry-based ... I try to continually ask questions to generate feedback, and I try to make the classroom experience more conducive to the students asking their own questions.”
• “I now strongly believe that teaching is most effective when students gain a sense of ownership over course material, and I work hard to help students switch from being passive recipients to active consumers. Because of my training and exploration in CSIP, I now make it my goal to help students engage with the material, and I foster this connection by presenting a topic in a way that relates to the students’ experiences. By using an inquiry-based approach, I have successfully provided students and advisees with strong knowledge bases, as well as giving them lifelong analytical tools.”
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Their classroom experiences gave the GK-12 fellows opportunities not only to increase their teaching skills but also to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning in ways not commonly available in teaching assistantships or other campus-based teaching programs.
At Cornell, evidence of fellows' success in inquiry-based teaching included refereed publication of their curriculum projects (see sidebar). One fellow expanded her GK-12 work into a book published by the National Science Teachers Association, and several published articles about their projects in science-education journals. A fellow in chemical ecology whose doctoral research focused on insect pheromones worked with high-school biology classes to conduct original experiments on the extent to which humans have comparable ability to react to olfactory cues. Affectionately dubbed “the stinky t-shirt project,” this work was published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology, with the fellow, two classes of high school students, and their teachers as co-authors.
A growing number of institutions have begun to recognize the importance of providing comprehensive opportunities for graduate students to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning. One way to acknowledge this work is through certificate programs that officially recognize systematic preparation for, and reflection on, college teaching. Typically, participants write a teaching philosophy statement, enhance their teaching skills through progressive responsibilities undertaken under faculty guidance, and assemble a portfolio demonstrating and reflecting on these teaching experiences.
Challenges
GK-12 fellowships require graduate students to balance competing demands for their time and attention. While working in high-pressure environments to become research scientists, it is no small challenge for them to also spend significant amounts of time teaching off campus. A key question in evaluating the program is the extent to which this balance can be achieved.
One way to judge the degree to which their teaching has distracted graduate students from research is to estimate its effect on their time to degree. A survey of CSIP alumni asked them to rate the extent to which they thought their GK fellowship had affected their progress toward the degree. Twenty percent of the 49 respondents reported that their progress had been slowed by a single semester, and 8 percent cited delays of two or more semesters. But 46 percent said that the fellowship had had no effect on the timing of their degree, and a surprising 17 percent reported that the fellowship had helped them to complete their degrees more quickly. They mentioned better time management, happiness, and the development of skills useful to research as reasons for the acceleration. As one explained,
My CSIP experience had me explore many areas of science related to, but not identical to, my degree. This
view of the broader context helped me expand and extend my research until it was truly at the Ph.D. level.
CSIP also got me comfortable with taking ownership over a project, so I was able to do more work without
the handholding of my advisor.
And how did their faculty advisors view what might have been seen as a distraction? Of the 48 Cornell faculty members who advised 54 graduate fellows over six years, only one was dissatisfied with his advisee’s fellowship experience. This professor complained that his advisee had become too enamored with teaching and outreach at the expense of her former dedication to research. The remaining 53 faculty spoke highly of their advisees’ GK-12 experiences, and 27 percent thought that the fellowship had positively affected the fellows’ scientific research—for example, through broadening their perspective or helping them to reconnect with the basic science behind their specialized fields.
But despite this reaction, it is indisputably true that at research institutions, a major challenge to improving professional development for graduate students interested in teaching is the undervaluation of teaching in the reward system for faculty. Students often receive mixed messages (at best) about the importance of teaching from their faculty advisors, who themselves are judged primarily or exclusively on the quality of their research. Some graduate students accept this situation, entering teaching careers with little or no preparation. Others develop their teaching interests without informing their advisors or committees because of worries that these efforts will not be valued.
Some graduates deliberately choose faculty careers at institutions where teaching is of primary importance, and others end up in such settings by default; although research institutions award the most doctoral degrees, insufficient openings exist in many fields for even a small fraction of their graduates to become faculty at similar institutions. And even those heading into careers at the most prestigious research institutions will be responsible for teaching undergraduates, and they will do so more effectively if prepared.
NSF hopes that the GK-12 program will help to raise teaching’s status by providing prestigious fellowships that require faculty and institutions to support graduate students who are engaged in educational outreach. As NSF puts it, one of the goals of GK-12 is “to provide institutions of higher education with an opportunity to make a permanent change in their graduate programs by incorporating GK-12-like activities in the training of their STEM graduate students.”
This vision of institutional change is a tall order, considering the central role of research in shaping the stature, influence, budgets, and functioning of universities. After the grant ends, how many institutions will continue to provide interested graduate students with similar opportunities to enhance their teaching skills?
According to NSF program officer Sonia Ortega, such questions cannot yet be answered comprehensively but are being addressed in a nationwide GK-12 evaluation that will be completed within the next couple of years. In the meantime, anecdotal evidence suggests that some institutions are institutionalizing aspects of their GK-12 projects—for example, by providing funding beyond the life of the grant for graduate students interested in conducting K-12 outreach or by offering ongoing courses designed to familiarize STEM graduate students with the scholarship of teaching and learning.
The GK-12 program is only one of many possible ways to help graduate students learn how to teach. The fellowships are expensive and time-consuming, and they cannot feasibly be offered to more than a small fraction of prospective faculty. But lessons learned through this program could be extended to other forms of graduate-student professional development aimed at nurturing teaching skills.
Campus teaching assistantships and related training programs, for example, could offer interested TAs the opportunity to explore active teaching strategies through developing, implementing, and evaluating lesson ideas under the guidance of experienced mentors. Alternatively, graduate students could carry out such activities in credit-bearing courses in which in they collaborate closely with experienced educators at either the college or pre-college level.
In the coming years, it will be useful to conduct research on whether and how new faculty have benefited from teaching preparation, either through experiences in schools such as those provided by NSF’s GK-12 fellowship program or through on-campus programs. Surely, new faculty will have an easier time launching their careers if given the opportunity to learn the skills of effective teaching while still in graduate school, and both they and their students will benefit from the increased expertise they bring to their teaching duties. One can only hope that over time, the value of such expertise will be routinely recognized in the professional development of graduate students aiming for faculty careers, as well as rewarded in faculty tenure and promotion decisions.
Resources
Austin, A. E. (2002). Preparing the next generation of faculty: Graduate school as socialization to the academic career. The Journal of Higher Education, 73(1), 94-122.
Brainard, J. (2007). America’s science test: The tough road to better science teaching. Chronicle of Higher Education, 53(48), A16.
Elmendorf, H. G. (2006). Learning through teaching. A new perspective on entering a discipline. Change, 38(6), 37-41.
Handelsman, J., Ebert-May, D., Beichner, R., Bruns, P., Chang, A., DeHaan, R., et al. (2004). Scientific teaching. Science, 304(5670), 521-522.
Kugel, P. (1993). How professors develop as teachers. Studies in Higher Education, 18(3), 315-328.
Luft, J. A., Kurdziel, J. P., Roehrig, G. H., & Turner, J. (2004). Growing a garden without water: Graduate teaching assistants in introductory science laboratories at a doctoral/research university. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(3), 211-233.
Mitchell, J., C. Bitter, & R. Levine. 2005. Findings from the formative evaluation of the National Science Foundation’s GK-12 Fellowship Program. Retrieved Dec. 12, 2007, from http://www.air.org/publications/documents/NSFGK12-Report-for-AIR_Final.pdf .
National Science Foundation. (2007). NSF graduate teaching fellows in K-12 education (GK-12) program solicitation. Retrieved May 23, 2007, from http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07555/nsf07555.pdf.
Trautmann, N. M., & Krasny, M. E. (2006). Integrating teaching and research: A new model for graduate education? BioScience, 56(2), 159-165.
Wieman, C. (2007). Why not try a scientific approach to science education? Change, 39(5), 9-15.
Curriculum Projects Published by CSIP Fellows
Books:
Rice, E., Krasny, M. E., & Smith, M. (2006). Garden Genetics: Teaching with Edible Plants. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.
Journal articles:
Ardia, D. R. (2005). Natural selection & variation: A hands-on lesson using bird specimens. American Biology Teacher, 67(8), 561-566.
Gift, N., & Krasny, M. E. (2003). The great fossil fiasco: Teaching about peer review. American Biology Teacher, 65(4), 270-278.
Schusler, T. (2004). Ecological and anthropogenic impacts of high densities of white tailed deer. Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, 2, http://tiee.ecoed.net/vol/v2/issues/figure_sets/deer/abstract.html.
Variano, E., & Taylor, K. (2006). Inquiry in limnology lessons. The Science Teacher, 73(6), 36-39.
Research publication:
Olsson, S., Barnard, J., & Turri, L. (2006). Olfaction and identification of unrelated individuals: Examination of the mysteries of human odor recognition. Journal of Chemical Ecology, 32(8), 1635-1645.
Detailed information about the program, with fellow profiles and a “What’s New” section; also includes an interactive map that allows visitors to locate projects across the nation; information on international GK-12 activities; a meetings calenda; and links to their annual report and grant/reporting guidelines.
GK-12 Education
General information about the program, including how to apply, as well as curriculum resources and links to various projects’ websites; a list of publications and presentations by GK-12 participant; a community page that lists current and former participants; and access to the GK-12 newsletter.
Cornell Science Inquiry Partnerships
Describes the CSIP and related efforts at Cornell; answers general faculty questions about CSIP; includes articles on CSIP from the news media; and includes a list of publications and presentations by CSIP fellows.
Selection of University Web Sites dedicated to GK-12, Ohio State University
University of Arkansas GK-12 Outreach
University of Hawaii EECB Graduate Fellowships in K-12 Education
University of Texas at Austin Environmental Science Institute GK-12 Program
