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UF awarded $2.7M for new center aiming to transform elementary teacher preparation

The revamped coursework and internship evaluations will place a heightened emphasis on data-driven decision-making and a forward-thinking instructional approach for classroom readiness.

The revamped coursework and internship evaluations will place a heightened emphasis on data-driven decision-making and a forward-thinking instructional approach for classroom readiness.

GAINESVILLE, Fla.—With $2.7 million from the Florida Department of Education, the University of Florida College of Education is creating a new “center of excellence” to transform its nationally ranked elementary teacher preparation program—and several of Alachua County’s high-needs schools will serve as the effort’s proving ground.

The DOE has awarded three-year grant support to UF and three other Florida institutions to establish a Center of Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation at each campus, with the education schools partnering with their local school districts on the effort. The other are Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, St. Petersburg College and Stetson University in Deland.

“We know more than we have ever known about how to prepare new teachers for strong starts and long careers of positive impact on student achievement,” said Brian Dassler, Florida DOE deputy chancellor for educator quality. “The centers of excellence grants have been awarded to four pioneer programs that will not only produce outstanding elementary teachers for Florida’s classrooms, but also blaze a trail for improved teacher preparation in the entire state.”

According to Dassler, the centers will place heightened emphasis on preparing teachers to improve learning among historically underachieving students including those with disabilities, English language learners and students living in poverty. Each teacher prep program is tailoring its strategies to the needs of its partnering school district, he said.

In Alachua County, 12 elementary schools so far have agreed to host UF teachers-in-training for their yearlong internships and participate in the UF teacher prep reform project. They include Chiles Elementary, Hidden Oak, High Springs Community School and P.K. Yonge, plus eight of the district’s high-need, Title 1 schools: Alachua Elementary, Finley, Glen Springs, Lake Forest, Littlewood, Meadowbrook, Norton, and Terwilliger.

UF’s teacher prep reform effort is dubbed Project ADePT, short for Advancing the Development of Preservice Teachers. It calls for deepening student-teachers’ content knowledge of core subject areas, strengthening teaching and classroom management skills , and improving feedback to future teachers during their final-year internship.

UF is Florida’s top-rated elementary teacher education program — ranked 17th nationally in U.S. News & World Report’s latest survey of America’s Best Graduate Schools — and has a long history of progressive, research-based teacher preparation practices. UF was one of the first education colleges in the nation to unify its general and special education programs and extend it from four years to five. Students now complete a full-year internship in their final two semesters of Year 5 before graduating with a master’s degree in education.

“We have a long-standing tradition of continuous program evaluation and improvement. This grant affords opportunities for some really creative program enhancements that we couldn’t otherwise pursue,” said Ester de Jong, director of the UF education college’s School of Teaching and Learning.

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Co-researchers on the elementary education reform project are, from left, Ester de Jong, Elizabeth “Buffy” Bondy and Suzanne Colvin.

De Jong is one of three UF co-researchers on the project, along with education professors Suzanne Colvin and Elizabeth Bondy, who is principal investigator.

Bondy said they are collaborating with subject area experts from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to revamp and expand the curriculum of UF’s Elementary ProTeach program so future teachers will gain a deeper knowledge of science, math, social studies and English language arts.

“One of the great opportunities to come from this grant is to restore social studies to its rightful place as a cornerstone of public education,” Bondy said. “With so much time now spent on preparing schoolchildren for standardized testing, social studies had fallen off the radar.”

UF teachers-in-training also will learn the latest, research-based approaches to instruction and classroom management and be supported by an innovative model of instructional coaching.

Bondy said the revamped coursework and internship evaluations will place a heightened emphasis on data-driven decision-making and a forward-thinking instructional approach for classroom readiness called Fast Start, which she said “will help our graduates start their first year as practicing teachers ready for the challenges ahead.”

New, Internet cloud-based video technology will allow school-based mentor teachers and UF-based supervisors to provide targeted commentary on the student teachers’ instructional practice down to the individual frame. Or, the students can study their own videos and share them confidentially with their peers on an online social platform designed just for them.

The college’s Lastinger Center for Learning, which designs and field-tests research-proven learning systems for school districts in several Florida counties and even in other countries, is adapting its instructional coaching model for UF’s elementary education reform project. Two school-based “professors-in-residence” from the college will serve as liasions between the public schools and the ProTeach program to help train the mentoring teachers and supervisors in the high-impact instructional and classroom management skills that the student-teachers will learn.

During the next two summers, UF content experts will conduct intensive, interdisciplinary workshops which combine subject area content knowledge and teaching practices for ProTeach students poised to start their final, year-long internships. Their mentoring teachers and college supervisors will also attend. The first workshop will integrate math, science, and technology.

“The redesign of our elementary education model will expand the pipeline of effective teachers locally and statewide,” Bondy said. “We’re particularly excited about strengthening our connections with the schools in east Gainesville.

“We’ll be better teacher educators when we understand the challenges and mandates that our public schools face. By providing higher quality interns and future teachers, we can have a dramatic impact on student learning.”

Everett Caudle, director of project and staff development for Alachua County Public Schools, said partnering with UF on its teacher prep reform project “holds great promise for preparing classroom-ready beginning teachers.”

He said the Alachua County teachers hosting the student-teachers also will benefit: “By fine-tuning their skills as student mentors and instructional coaches, they will become more aware and critical of their own instruction.”

CONTACTS
   SOURCE: Elizabeth Bondy, UF College of Education; 352-273-4242; bondy@coe.ufl.edu
   SOURCE: Ester de Jong, UF College of Education; 352-273-4227; edejong@coe.ufl.edu
   SOURCE: Jackie Johnson, School Board of Alachua County; 352-955-7880;  jackie.johnson@gm.sbac.edu
   WRITER/MEDIA LIAISON: Larry Lansford, communications director, UF College of Education; 352-273-4137; llansford@coe.ufl.edu

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Business school taps science ed. professor as Entrepreneurship Fellow

Griff Jones1

Griff Jones, clinical associate professor of science education

Griff Jones, a clinical associate professor of science education at the University of Florida College of Education, has been selected as an Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellow by the UF Warrington College of Business Administration’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Jones, who serves as director and principal investigator for the Florida STEM Teacher Induction and Professional Support (STEM TIPS) initiative, received the honor based on his proposal to expand the scope of STEM TIPS, which he began developing two years ago after receiving a $2.3 million grant from the Florida Department of Education.

The innovative program addresses the challenges of retaining beginning math and science teachers in grades 6-12 through use of an online, mobile-ready coaching and professional development platform. Implementation and field-testing is under way in several Florida school districts, including Duval, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, as well as 15 districts comprising the Northeast Florida Educational Consortium.

Funding for the initial platform has run out, but as an Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellow, Jones will be able to continue its development by adding a viable, self-sustaining business plan created through a subscription-based model to ensure sustainability and continuous improvement of the STEM TIPS program.

“I’d like to expand the scale of our model to assist institutions and organizations across the nation in their efforts to prepare highly qualified and passionate STEM teachers for K-12 schools,” Jones said. “And I’d like to provide ongoing support to new teachers that will enhance their professional development and keep them in the classroom.”

Jones received his Ph.D. and M.Ed. degrees in science education from UF after earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from Florida Southern College. He taught science at P.K. Yonge, UF’s K-12 developmental research school in Gainesville, for 20 years before becoming a full-time COE faculty member in 2007.

Jones specializes in designing effective, inquiry-based interdisciplinary science programs, and has authored several highly successful and nationally disseminated science textbooks, curriculum guides, online-course materials and science lab teaching materials.

He has collaborated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to develop several award-winning educational films focusing on STEM applications in analyzing car crashes that are used by thousands of teachers throughout the U.S. He also has received statewide and national recognition for his efforts as a K-adult science educator, including the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching awarded by the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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Adams, Vernetson named to FLDOE review panel

Alyson Adams3

Alyson Adams, clinical associate professor in the COE’s School of Teaching and Learning, and Theresa Vernetson, assistant dean of student affairs, have been named to the Florida Department of Education’s statewide review panel charged with advising the Florida education commissioner on revisions to protocol standards for district professional development systems. 

Their appointments to the Professional Development Protocol Revisions Update panel helps to position the COE as a frontline player in the development of state education policies and practices as they relate to Learning Forward — formerly known as the National Staff Development Council.

“Florida has an intensive cycle of reviews of professional development practices and policies in each school district,” said Adams, who also is chief learning officer for the college’s Lastinger Center for Learning. “Dr. Vernetson was on the team of people who conceptualized this more than 10 years ago, and they’re pausing the process to review the entire set of statewide professional development standards as well as the review process.”

Adams and Vernetson both plan to attend the first in a series of five or six panel meetings on June 6 in Orlando.

 As clinical associate professor, Adams works within job-embedded graduate programs for practicing educators focused on teacher leadership and practitioner research in local contexts. Her work with the college’s Lastinger Center for Learning includes professional development initiatives for teachers in high-poverty schools throughout the state.

Although retiring later this month after 41 years at the College of Education as both a student and long-time administrator, Vernetson will continue serving on the FLDOE review panel.

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GAINESVILLE SUN, STATE IMPACT: STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

Gainesville Sun, State Impact, The Times of Alapachicola and Carrabelle
10-16-12, 10-31-12
STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

The Gainesville Sun, State Impact, a reporting project of local public media and NPR, and The Times of Alapachicola and Carrabelle reported that the Florida Department of Education awarded the University of Florida’s College of Education with a $2 million grant. The grant will fund the creation of a statewide support system for science and math teachers in middle and high schools, as well as a new Florida STEM-Teacher Induction and Professional Support Center.

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UF awarded $2 million grant to boost science, math teaching in Florida schools

Answering a call to ensure Florida has the best-educated workforce for the global knowledge economy, the University of Florida is launching a statewide effort to bolster teaching and learning in science and mathematics in the middle school and high school grades.

Officials with UF and the Florida Department of Education jointly announced today that UF’s College of Education has been awarded a two-year grant worth $2 million to create a research-based, professional development support system for new science and math teachers.

The project’s most noteworthy feature is the creation of prototype “teacher induction” programs to support teachers in their first two years on the job. Induction will involve online and face-to-face mentoring, professional development and networking opportunities with their peers.  Center faculty and staff also will assist partnering school districts in creating coaching programs for novice science and math teachers.

To coordinate the project, UF has established a program called Florida STEM-Teacher Induction and Professional Support, also known as Florida STEM-TIPS Center. STEM is a common acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics — key technical subject areas that Gov. Rick Scott has declared as a high priority in Florida’s public schools to support the growth of high-wage jobs in the private sector.

Griffith Jones, a UF science education professor and principal investigator of the project, will oversee development of statewide teacher induction activities. Jones said they will start in Dade, Duval and Palm Beach counties, where UF has existing partnerships with the local school districts, and then  expand to other interested districts throughout the state.

“The induction support activities will ensure that the training and collegial support of teachers-in-training won’t end at graduation, but will continue into their first two years of teaching,” Jones said. “We aim to work with districts to reverse the lack of teacher induction support that historically drives nearly one-third of new teachers from the classroom by their third year of teaching.”

Jones said induction activities for new math and science teachers will include professional-development training in new curriculum standards and high-engagement instructional practices, on-the-job training programs and grade-specific mentoring.

UF professors with the center also will lead webinars and create a web-based gateway for collaborating and sharing information so science and math educators can network with peers across the state.

The need for reform in STEM teacher education is well documented. In Florida, fewer than half of all eighth-graders have teachers who majored or minored in mathematics, according to Jones. Nationwide projections cite a need for 280,000 new math and science teachers by 2015.

Supported by the DOE grant, UF professors also will visit state universities to share information on a highly touted STEM teacher preparation program called UTeach, which is the model for the University of Florida’s own “UFTeach” program. The UTeach model, created by University of Texas-Austin professors in 1997, recruits top science and math majors into teaching by offering a creative curriculum with progressively complex field experiences teaching those subjects in area schools.

“We are poised to make an important leap in STEM education in Florida,” said Tom Dana, UF professor of science education and co-director of UFTeach. “The STEM-TIPS program will allow us to assist other Florida universities who share a goal of reformed science and math teacher preparation.”

As part of the state grant, UF is providing technical assistance to Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne in developing a UTeach “replicate” program on their campus, according to Dana.

For more information, visit the Florida STEM-TIPS website at https://education.ufl.edu/stem-tips.

CONTACTS
SOURCE: Florida Department of Education Press Office, 850-245-041
WRITER: Larry Lansford, director, news and communications, UF College of Education; llansford@coe.ufl.edu; 352-273-4137

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FLDOE: STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

Florida Department of Education
10-15-12
STEM education/STEM-TIPS Center

The Florida Department of Education posted a press release about its awarding of a $2 million grant to the University of Florida’s College of Education. The grant will fund the creation of a statewide support system for science and math teachers in middle and high schools, including the new Florida STEM-Teacher Induction and Professional Support Center.

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