 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||
 |
|
||||||||
School University Collaborations at UTEP:
Problem-Based Learning in Teacher
Preparation for Science and MathematicsJosefina Tinajero, Dean, Education College
Bill Robertson, Asst. Professor, Teacher Education
Olga Kosheleva, Instructor, Teacher Education
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Abstract
Problem-based learning (PBL) is an inquiry-based approach that can be defined as both a curriculum and a process. The curriculum consists of carefully selected and designed problems that engage the learner in the process of acquiring critical knowledge, developing proficiency in problem solving, engaging in self-directed learning, and participating in collaborative teams.
This is also a fundamental tenet of the field-based operations within the Teacher Education department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) which allows for the engagement of theory and practice in actual El Paso classrooms and communities. It is the purpose of this paper to highlight such initiatives and to elaborate on the application of inquiry-based approaches in science and mathematics.
I. School-University Partnerships
The city of El Paso is a bustling urban area of 600,000 people, more than 70% of whom are Mexican in origin. Across the river from El Paso sits the Mexican City of Juarez, a city of more than 1.2 million people, and together El Paso and Juarez represent the largest metropolitan area along the 2,000 mile U.S./Mexico border. A significant factor in El Paso's population growth is the migration of residents from Mexico. Almost a quarter of El Paso's population is foreign born, and over 50 percent of El Paso's households speak Spanish as the language of preference. The two largest school districts in the El Paso area, El Paso and Ysleta, provide instruction to over 113,000 school children, a very large proportion of all the public school children in El Paso County and, indeed, in far west Texas. Nearly 70% of these 113,000 students are Hispanic. Over 40 percent of the 48,500 students in Ysleta Independent School District enter school as limited English proficient students.
UTEP’s College of Education has developed strong relationships with interdisciplinary partners in the Arts and Sciences, local K-12 school districts and the El Paso Community College. Working together with these partners, the College of Education graduates more than 500 teachers each year, many of them from the El Paso area. More than 80% of UTEP’s 19,000 students are Mexican-American and are the first in their families to attend college. They represent a promising pool of potential teachers and need to be presented with opportunities to participate in postsecondary programs of studies that will prepare them to be highly qualified teachers and leaders for the next generation of children and youth.
II. Teacher Preparation Model at UTEP
Over the past ten years, UTEP’s College of Education, Arts, & Sciences have worked collaboratively to increase recruitment, preparation, and retention of high quality K-12 teachers. Using a field-based model for teacher preparation, based on extensive research and study, UTEP’s teacher education students engage in extensive community-based experiences and benefit from the supervision and mentoring of both university faculty and pubic school teachers who act as clinical faculty. University professors have an opportunity to spend time observing their interns in the schools, meet with clinical faculty, and have a far better and fresher understanding of the school culture than under the old traditional model. More extensive experiences in the classrooms are presently required of pre-service interns who spend 650 hours over two semesters in Partner School classrooms, and are grouped in cohorts of thirty in their university classes and field experiences. In any given semester, approximately 500 pre-service interns are assigned to field experiences in high-need partner schools.
In 2004, UTEP accelerated its efforts toward the reform of teacher preparation when it was selected to partner with ten other institutions nationwide in working on the “Teachers for a New Era” (TNE) Initiative funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, with additional support from the Annenberg, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Through the TNE Initiative, faculty from the Colleges of Education, Arts, and Science have been working in partnership to address the issues related to the review and renewal of the instructional content and clinical practices offered to pre-service teachers. In addition, through TNE, the University is in the process of developing a model to assess the impact of high quality teachers on pupil achievement.III. An Overview of Problem-Based Learning
Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is an inquiry-based approach that can be defined as both a curriculum and a process. The curriculum consists of carefully selected and designed problems that engage the learner in the process of acquiring critical knowledge, developing proficiency in problem solving, engaging in self-directed learning, and participating in collaborative teams. So much fascinating information is at the fingertips of learners everywhere; and with the increase in the affordability and availability of technology, more and more learners have access to various information sources. PBL approaches give students the ability to retain facts though critical thinking by working through problems logically and making connections to the real world. UTEP faculty and pre-service teachers are engaging in this process, which will potentially have wide reaching results and repercussions in the field of education.
How can teachers and the students they serve become more informed citizens regarding real world issues? A national report found that U.S. education had a “splintered vision”: standards in science and mathematics education are not only unfocused, but aimed at the lowest common denominator (Schmidt et al, TIMSS, 1996). Compared to teachers in 50 other countries, U.S. teachers are expected to address a wide range of subjects, yet they seldom have the time to teach them in depth. As a result, students often take a piecemeal approach to learning and view content information as the boring memorization of facts that are seemingly irrelevant to their everyday lives.
Meaning is a human construction with a social situation. The learner is always defining meaning within the context of action and reflection. Yet, educators must consider the learner’s point of view as fully complete and significant in and of itself. (Dewey, 1970). Each learner understands content and concepts differently based on his or her previous experiences. The students need opportunities to address misconceptions and to develop concepts in real world situations. “Students come to school with their own ideas, some correct and some not, about almost every topic they are likely to encounter” (Rutherford and Algren, 1990). Learning is the responsibility of the learner, but the teacher must guide the student into developing meaning from content material and classroom experience.
Problem-based learning (PBL) is a multidisciplinary approach that integrates effective teaching and learning practices with computer technology. This curriculum integration process engages students in collaborative research that can be shared in the classroom, across a community or around the globe. PBL features open-ended and cooperative activities that deal with real world issues and scenarios and is used in a variety of educational settings, including elementary schools.With low enrollment and potential district budget cuts, Bonham Elementary School of the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) was faced with an uncertain future just two years ago. Because of an out pouring of support from the community, the school doors at Bonham have remained open. Yet the school is now facing an even greater challenge: to become a Model School for Science, Math and Technology at the Elementary level for the entire EPISD district. In order to accomplish this objective, the faculty at Bonham, with support from EPISD and UTEP’s College of Education, have begun a process to build a Problem-based Learning (PBL) curriculum to engage students in grades K-5, and to increase student outcomes in science, math and technology.
PBL has been widely used in post-secondary and secondary education for a number of years, yet little research information exists on the use of a PBL approach at the elementary level. In partnership with the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Teacher Education Department and beginning in the Fall of 2004, Bonham Elementary has begun the process of transitioning to a campus wide K-5 PBL curriculum implementation model.
Curriculum must be designed so that it reflects real life situations, especially in the areas of science, mathematics and technology (Bentley, 1995). Studies have shown that students who are involved in PBL acquire knowledge and become proficient in problem solving. (Robertson, 2000) Furthermore, PBL students often perform as well as their counterparts from traditional classrooms on national exams, with the added benefit of working through problems logically and making connections to the real world. In The Process of Education, Jerome Bruner writes; “Students should know what it feels like to be completely absorbed in a problem. They seldom experience this feeling in school” (Bruner, 1962). This is also a fundamental tenet of the field-based operations within the Teacher Education department at UTEP, and allows for the engagement of theory and practice in actual El Paso classrooms and communities.V. Alicia Chacon International School
The goal of the Alicia Chacon International School is that all students who enroll in the school will graduate from high school, fluent in two or more languages, prepared and inspired to continue their education in a four year college, university or institution of higher education so that they become successful citizens in their community. This Two-way Bilingual Immersion program combines native speakers of Spanish with native speakers of English, so that there will be cross learning of the two languages.
At UTEP, pre-service teachers currently enrolled in the Teaching Science in Intermediate and Middle Grades class (MSED 4311) are those who will lead the activities in the community based workshops. This course explores the methods and materials needed for teaching science in fourth through eighth grade, and includes the utilization of field experiences. Pre-service teachers in the class are required to participate in a Community Outreach Activity. Following Epstein’s Model of Parent Involvement, students will participate in and provide a reflection paper on a community outreach activity that focuses on parental involvement in learning, both in the home and in the school settings.
The university developed a community outreach component for a MSED 4311 course in which UTEP student interns designed activities to do alongside teachers from Alicia Chacon International School as part of a series of Family Math Nights in November 2004. The purpose was to involve parents in activities that centered on science and mathematics concepts found in household situations and materials. It also allowed for the student interns to create and perform activities at two separate nights at which over 250 parents and community members attended. The workshop format allowed the pre-service teachers to focus on methods of inquiry within the activities and to develop pathways to establishing partnerships with the parents, students, staff and other community members that might attend the outreach effort.VI. Canutillo Elementary School
Canutillo Elementary School, located in Canutillo, Texas, is approximately twenty miles northwest of El Paso. It serves 700 students in grades Pre Kinder to sixth grade. The student population is approximately 93 percent Hispanic. Canutillo Elementary School serves as Professional Development School for UTEP’s Field-Based Teacher Preparation Program. This program is characterized by several unique features that recognize community-based forms of education, such as internships and service-learning.
The College of Education’s program of studies prioritizes the community and its families as full partners in teacher preparation. Pre-service teachers combine theory with practice in their role as school interns through a variety of programs designed collaboratively, in which: a) public school personnel and community members work closely with University faculty to design, implement, and evaluate teacher education programs to serve the diverse needs of this region and; b) a significant portion of pre-service teachers’ course work takes place in the community and its schools.
Problem Based Learning as implemented in the team-taught courses including Math content (Math 3305) and Math methods (ECED/BED 4310) courses has several features. When applied to teaching math content, it includes mathematically motivating projects, discovery-based learning, no “book learning”, professors are “metacognitive coaches”, and students discover, create and “own” their unique set of solutions.
Students are taught in the Professional development school that provides better connection with in-service teachers and pupils. In the mathematics education component of PBL students extend the concepts/procedures discovered in math projects to create grade-appropriate math lessons; students are encouraged to research what manipulatives can be used in their lessons and then create their own “virtual manipulatives” using Tablet PCs.
The focus points of the semester are Parent Power Nights organized by pre-service teachers. This is a tradition at Canutillo District and typically one or two Parent Power Nights are organized during a semester. Parental participation varies between 100 and 300 people.
Preparation of Parent Power Nights requires students to create a variety of math oriented mini-lessons appropriate for different age levels. Students research and analyze the framework of different types of parental involvement. Students create “Letters to parents”, a variety of math activities to be done at home by parents and children together. Besides Parent Power Nights several mini-lessons are taught by groups of students as well as individual students during a semester followed by discussion and reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the lessons.
In a preliminary comparison of two different blocks of students both taught with PBL approach and team-teaching, we were able to compare the following classes: class A and class B. The only difference between them was that class A was actively organizing and participating in the Parent Power Nights while class B was only involved in teaching mini lessons. The mathematical content knowledge was compared. The results show that even though in the beginning of the semester class B demonstrated better mathematical content knowledge, by the middle of semester the situation changed and, on their midterm, class B students’ achievements were significantly lower than students from class A.
Similar comparisons from previous semesters show that pre-service teachers actively involved in working with parents take the state certification exam at earlier dates compared to the pre-service teachers from other classes. They also have a higher passing rate for the state certification exam.In the College of Education at UTEP, the preparation of educators is collaboratively designed and managed. University faculty, public school personnel, Education Service Center staff and community members all work together to design, implement, and evaluate educator preparation programs that serve the needs of the diverse student population of the region. These highlighted efforts at Bonham Elementary, Alicia Chacon International School and Canutillo Elementary are examples of the field-based work with a pre-service emphasis.
These innovative partnerships, along with enhancing inquiry-based Science & Math teaching and learning and developing strong learning communities with linked courses and field work assignments will contribute to strengthening the preparation of high quality new teachers at UTEP, and to enhancing student learning opportunities throughout the El Paso community.
Bentley, M.L. (1995). Carpe Diem, Science Activities, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 23-30.
Bruner, J. (1962). The Process of Education, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dewey, J. (1970). The Child and the Curriculum, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Robertson, W.H. (2000). The Critical Thinking Curriculum Model, Dissertation from the University of New Mexico.
Rutherford, F. James and Algrehn, Andrew (1990). Science For All Americans, New York: Oxford University Press.
Schmidt et al (1996). Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Washington: National Center for Education Studies Press.
