Contact:
Mabry Gaboardi
(850) 766-4920
mgaboardi@lsi.fsu.edu
June 14, 2010
This summer 240 math and science educators from across Florida will devote two weeks to becoming better teachers, thanks to a series of professional development institutes offered by the Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (FCR-STEM).
The workshops are funded by a $6.3 million, three-year federal flow-through grant to the Florida Department of Education and organized through Florida PROMiSE, a partnership of several state universities, school districts and educational consortia. Laura Lang, director of the Learning Systems Institute (LSI), which is home to FCR-STEM, is the principal investigator on the grant. The six workshops focus on forces and motion, matter and energy, earth-space science, algebra or geometry. Each workshop will include 40 participants.
Taking place in June and July in Tallahassee, Chipley and Seminole County, the institutes will feature faculty from The Florida State University who are specialists in the subject matter being taught, as well as district resource teachers and current classroom teachers who are pedagogical experts. These instructor teams will teach the participants -- elementary and secondary teachers -- through inquiry learning.
"Participants really get a chance to think about the content material and explore it with the experts right there,” explained project manager Mabry Gaboardi, assistant director of LSI. “As they have questions, they can just immediately ask.”
Learning does not stop at the end of two weeks, however. At follow-up sessions conducted during the school year, participants will learn more about the pedagogy behind the science and math instruction, working in teams to design a lesson from the content learned over the summer. The experience is designed to encourage these teams to develop into ongoing learning communities, allowing teachers to share ideas and support each other in their professional development. Institute participants will share even further by posting their lesson plans to CPALMS, an online system created by FCR-STEM that integrates professional support tools for teachers and high-quality instructional resources aligned to state standards in science and math.
All of the summer’s sessions are full. For more information, contact Mabry Gaboardi.
FCR-STEM is a multidisciplinary research center created by the Florida Legislature and devoted to helping the state improve teaching and learning in K-12 science, technology, engineering and math and prepare students for higher education and STEM careers in the 21st century. It is located within the Learning Systems Institute at The Florida State University.
Florida PROMiSE (Partnership to Rejuvenate and Optimize Mathematics and Science Education in Florida) is a partnership among three Florida universities (The Florida State University, University of South Florida and the University of Florida), four large school districts (Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Duval and Seminole), educational consortia (Heartland Educational Consortium, North East Florida Educational Consortium and Panhandle Area Educational Consortium), Florida Virtual School and Horizon Research, Inc.