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Project Summary
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“Because the main goals of reformers are to instill a deeper understanding in students of the central ideas and issues in various subjects and to enable students to see how these ideas connect to, and can be applied in, real-world situations, it makes sense to require that teachers themselves also understand the central concepts of their subjects, see these relationships...”(Kennedy, 1998, p. 254). “The need for science teachers who not only have a firm grasp of content, but also know how to teach students is enormous”
(Wenglinsky & Silverstein, 2007, p.9).
In the SOAR Project, participants will have the enviable opportunity of stepping outside of their school classrooms in order to, via collaborative networks, both virtually and in the same environment, learn new science content, share resources and participate in stimulating and informative conversations with practitioners at the middle and high school levels and university professors.
The project is designed to provide professional development for 110 middle and high-school science teachers from participating school districts in the Florida Panhandle. The focus for the in-depth training is content from the Sunshine State Standards strands, targeting the physical and chemical sciences, and teaching that content to students from an inquiry perspective. The training curricula will be developed by teams from University of Florida, University of West Florida and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. |
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