“Innovations in STEM Education” is this year’s theme for the TERC-hosted, week-long, and largest Video Showcase to date, “STEM for All,” lasting Monday, May 13th to Monday, May 20th. This free, online, and interactive film festival provides researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and informal educators the opportunity to connect and share short videos of their work on 240+ projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other federal organizations.
One video in the mix has the title Developing effective mentor teachers: Tools and practices for supporting teacher candidates in the field (View/Vote Here) and was developed by a team of researchers working on the project NASCENT, or New Approaches to Support the Clinical Experience of Novice Teachers. Some results of that work can be found at their website, Mentoring Teachers. One of NASCENT’s PIs is UC Santa Barbara's Karin Lohwasser, a lecturer in the Department of Education and Teacher Education Program, who is accompanied by her team: Mark Windschitl, Caroline Hadley and Soo-Yean Shim (University of Washington) and Jen Richard (Northwestern University).
The NASCENT project centralizes around several questions their video submission speaks to, including, says Dr. Lohwasser, “What makes mentoring effective for preservice teachers just learning to teach? Can mentoring for ambitious teaching be learned? In this video, we share how we're developing a system of tools, practices, and resources that mentors and preservice teachers can use together over the course of student teaching. This system includes videos and protocols for six key mentoring practices — making thinking explicit, modeling the work of teaching, pre-briefing and debriefing, co-planning, co-teaching, and analyzing student work together. We invite our colleagues in the field to think with us about what's working so far and what tensions arise from efforts to influence how mentor teachers and preservice teachers collaborate.”
The Effective Novice Teachers: How Systems of Support Can Transform the Clinical Experience During Teacher Preparation project, highlighted in their video, is funded by the National Science Foundation through a Noyce, Track 4 grant (DUE-1758264).
Free public voting for the Showcase is open from May 13th-20th for visitors to view, discuss, and vote for their favorites. “The power of the Showcase is that it gives educators and researchers access to a broad range of innovative projects funded by multiple programs within the National Science Foundation and by other federal agencies. This interactive experience allows multiple audiences from across the globe to provide feedback, comments, resources, and ideas that enrich efforts as they evolve,” said Joni Falk, Principal Investigator of the Video Showcase and co-director of the Center for School Reform at TERC.
To learn more about the Showcase, watch the project videos, and vote before Monday, May 20 at 5pm PST, visit https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/
TERC, the Showcase’s host, is a nonprofit made up of teams of math and science education and research experts dedicated to innovation and creative problem solving. At the frontier of theory and practice, TERC’s work encompasses research, content and curriculum development, technology innovation, professional development, and program evaluation. TERC has a passion for social justice and strives to create level playing fields for all learners, reaching more than three million students every year. To learn more, please visit https://www.terc.edu/.