Goals

PRISM aims to stimulate reflection and continuous improvement, providing teachers and graduate students with an opportunity to take the lead in producing knowledge about pedagogical practice and to act as change agents in the educational system. Our goals include:

• Enhancing the professional development of math/science graduate and undergraduate fellows in active learning teaching pedagogies and reflective practice by developing their skills in content rich curriculum development and implementation.
• Enhancing graduate student skills in teamwork required for interdisciplinary science collaboration that leads to success in modern scientific research.
• Instilling graduate fellows with skills to communicate science effectively to a broader audience and preparing them to include outreach activities in their career goals when they are practicing scientists.
• Forming teacher/researcher/graduate-student/undergraduate-student teams to implement problem based learning (PBL) and investigative case based learning (ICBL) in middle school and high school classes. Each team develops materials and resources for problem based and interactive cases for middle and high school that integrate grade appropriate science and math content and adapts existing PBL and ICBL cases for local use.
• Improving the math/science content knowledge of middle and high school teachers through the development of curriculum materials and resources and by providing team-designed professional development opportunities for other teachers.
• Enhancing articulation and communication between middle school and high school teachers and between teachers and college faculty and students.
• Providing role models for the diverse student body of the districts by recruiting diverse university partners as part of the project.
• Improving middle school and high school student interest in SMET careers and improving performance in SMET classes and tests.