Student Achievement and the Participation of Rural High School Chemistry Teachers in a Multi-Year Professional Development Program with Special Emphasis on the Use of Computational Tools
Abstract
"The ICLCS program for rural high school chemistry teachers provides professional development in content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and computational science teaching tools. It is provided over the course of three years, via an intensive two-week residential institute each summer in addition to a virtual professional learning community through which teachers take an online chemistry course every year and have access to university mentors (participating faculty). Results show that ICLCS is a powerful intervention that increases teachers' content knowledge and use of computational science teaching tools and that that is reflected in higher student scores on the American Chemical Society's exam. Student post-test scores and pre- to post-test gains have improved with each year of intervention received by teachers."View All Paper Session Presentations from the 2011 MSP LNC Conference