Professional Development for Enduring Understanding of Science via Inquiry and Literacy (EUSIL)

Project Title: Professional Development for Enduring Understanding of Science via Inquiry and Literacy (EUSIL)

Project Director:  Dr. Gouranga Saha

Lead Institution:  Lincoln University

Duration of Project:  Three years (Cycle-6 is the first year for this project)

Grade Level Focus:  K-12

Credit Hours to be Provided:  3 graduate credit hours 

Project Summary:
The multi-year proposed professional development (PD) program, Enduring Understanding of Science via Inquiry & Literacy(EUSIL) has a goal to increase the number of highly qualified teachers who teach science. The project proposes to design and implement a high-yield professional development curriculum for teachers following the best instructional practices that lead to enduring understanding of science. This PD program will involve multiple partners to help serve FIVE high-need school districts having a total student population of 50,479 (Appendix K, p. 108) in the St. Louis metropolitan area of Missouri for increasing the academic achievement of students in science through inquiry & literacy. Six objectives (Ref. Proposal Narrative, p. 12) will guide this PD project. In addition to having a number of value added student achievements, this multi-year project will focus on different (Ref. Table 1 above) need-based science GLEs content area each year. Twenty five focused grade level science teachers from the high-need partnered school districts will participate each year in best practices model of PD program to achieve all the six project objectives. Using the project team developed PD curriculum, the participants will model teach their peers for “lesson study research” during their summer workshop and finally implement the project prompted strategies into their classrooms. Two time classroom mentoring and coaching and 6 Saturday follow-up reflections will be employed to reinforce the knowledge & skills learned during the summer and to support implementation process. An e-conferencing via Blackboard or Angel courseware will connect instructional team with all the participants during and possibly beyond the life of this grant for an on-line PD support and cross-grade level vertical communications to enhance the quality of teachers for their students’ enduring understanding of science. Teachers will present the findings to local science conference/s and participate in one-day science symposium at Lincoln. Multi-faceted assessment strategies will be employed to evaluate the extent to which the objectives of the project are achieved. Teachers will receive 3 Graduate Credit from LU for their full participation.