Participation in Pathways represents a significant time commitment on the part of both teacher and scientist partners. Partnership teams, composed of one teacher and two scientists, will first come together in August at the Pathways 2-day retreat. At this retreat, all participants will be introduced to the program and the key research into promoting student learning that underlies the program. Participants will experience a model Pathways lesson, and teams will begin planning their lessons together. Scientists will attend five full-day Pathways professional development workshops over the course of the academic year. Each workshop will provide an opportunity to focus on strategies to increase student engagement and success in science, in particular students from backgrounds underrepresented in the sciences. Teacher partners will also be present at these Pathways professional development days. In addition, scientists will attend the SEP Scientist Teaching Workshops, if they have not done so already.
The partnership team will together develop two curricular units that integrate the scientists’ research topics into investigative learning experiences for students. SEP staff will provide support to Pathways teams as they develop these lessons and incorporate new teaching strategies into the lessons. Scientist partners will come to the school site 10 times over the course of the year to co-teach portions of the units with their teacher partners.
As a culminating activity, students in Pathways classrooms will work in teams to develop Pathways projects. These projects may include: interviews of their scientist partners, or of family members, news-show type pieces explaining the significance of the scientific concepts they studied in their Pathways lessons, etc. SEP staff will provide access to video equipment and related technology necessary to complete these projects as well as support to teachers to enable these projects to be successful.
Finally, students will present their Pathway projects both to other students in the school as well as to their families at a Family Science Night hosted by the partnership team at the school site.
Pathways scientists will participate fully in all aspects of program evaluation. This may include completion of pre-/post-survey instruments, interviews, and observations of Pathways lessons.
All Pathways scientists will receive a participation incentive of $1500 for their time dedicated to this project.