Interdisciplinary Teams for Teacher Professional Development

TL;DR

This paper describes the development and implementation of the San Antonio Teacher Training Astronomy Academy, an interdisciplinary professional development program aimed at increasing teachers' confidence and effectiveness in teaching astronomy and STEM.

Contribution

It presents a novel interdisciplinary approach combining content expertise and pedagogy to improve teacher training in astronomy, with iterative development and program evaluation.

Findings

Increased teacher confidence in astronomy teaching

Successful development of three cohorts of alumni

Insights into interdisciplinary collaboration processes

Abstract

Secondary school teachers often lack the necessary content background in astronomy to teach such a course confidently. Our theory of change postits that an increased confidence level will increase student retention in astronomy and related STEM fields. Beyond the science content knowledge though, teachers need opportunities to embed the content in pedagogically sound practices, and with appropriate technology tools. We report on our interdisciplinary approach to designing, developing, fielding, and iteratively improving the San Antonio Teacher Training Astronomy Academy (SATTAA), an annually offered Teacher Professional Development program. In particular, we present how our separate areas of expertise, in content and in STEM pedagogy, led to a synergistic process of teacher professional development that has now resulted in three cohorts of alumni. In this paper, we share our interdisciplinary processes and lessons learned; program metrics are described elsewhere in detail.