Abstract:

This presentation presents and explores the mentoring relationship between university professors and/or science researchers (mentors) and 7-12th grade science teachers (teachers) participating in a United States federally funded Addiction Research and Investigation for Science (ARISE) program. This program focused on improving the ability of science teachers to effectively teach neuroscience to their students who are both English Learners (ELs) and native speakers of English. The project targeted teachers in the California Central Valley, a highly agricultural and migrant worker area, with high numbers of English Learner (EL) students. One of the goals of the program was to increase the cultural awareness and EL teaching capabilities of the science teachers such that this new knowledge would enhance their classroom pedagogy in order to increase student learning and interest in science.
Teachers were introduced to the 5E pedagogical model through an initial summer program, combining neuroscience content with cultural nuanced learning and teaching of the 5E model. During the institute, teachers were matched with a university professor to serve as their mentor. The mentor relationship was designed to support teachers and students during the completion of a class research project, using the neuroscience and pedagogical content area skills learned from the summer institute.
After being involved in ARISE, mentors were asked to complete a survey regarding their mentoring experiences. Findings showed: (1) mentors needed to be equipped with demographic background data for the students in the 7-12 grade classrooms to better prepare themselves to work with science teachers; (2) mentors needed more information on district policy that guided classroom based research projects, (3) teachers in middle and high schools had limited knowledge of the research process, limiting their capacity to design and develop original classroom research projects, (4) the most important barrier to successful mentor teacher relationships was communication, and (5) mentors who had positive mentoring relationships prior to this study were better able to communicate and support their teachers. These findings provide insights for effective mentoring models aimed at increasing interest in science and viable connections for students to universities.

Keywords:

Science mentoring, university-school partnerships.