Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
While Alaska is the largest state geographically in the United States, it also has the fewest miles of paved road. 86% of Alaska's communities and about 30% of the state's population are connected to other communities in the state through a network of rivers, coastline, and airports As the roads go, so also goes access to telecommunications, access to the Internet, and the ability to provide live training locally. Lack of access to infrastructure in rural communities place Alaskan educators at an extreme disadvantage due to a variety of travel, communication, and logistical challenges. Many people who live in Alaska villages will likely use traditional food gathering (subsistence) as their main economic activity. In general, rural Alaskan schools have higher dropout rates, lower graduation rates, and perform at a lower level of standardized test scores compared to urban Alaskans.The structure of small and rural schools means that many educators must teach outside of their area of content preparation. Over 48% percent of Alaska's 487 public schools have fewer than 50 students. Certified teachers working in Alaska's rural and remote schools typically teach to multiple grade levels at the same time and teach in multiple disciplines each day, meaning that many teachers in rural Alaska routinely teach in fields that they are not academically prepared to teach per Every Student Succeeds Act standards. Many of the rural school districts in Alaska cover a geographical area similar in size to a medium-sized state such as Pennsylvania or Oregon. School district central offices are located in larger rural communities that have populations between 2,200 to 6,300 and high school enrollments between 140 to 500 students. Rural school districts also support schools in several villages that have populations from 100 to 500 people with K-12 enrollments as low as 10 students. The school is usually the largest building in remote villages and it houses the entire K-12 operation; the modern equivalent to the one-room schoolhouse.Rural Alaska's teachers and school districts need high quality professional development and curricular resources to strengthen place-based teaching not only in the sense of a fitting curriculum but also a pedagogy . This PD should provide teachers with both classroom and outdoor learning materials and activities centering the value and relationship with local places and communities. Rural Alaskan teachers, especially those who teach outside of their content areas, can benefit from exciting and energetic PDs where they collaboratively develop ideas and designs for how to incorporate place-based teaching and how to honor Indigenous knowledge throughout their STEM instruction. In addition, the economy in Alaska is predominantly involved with natural resources either through mining, oil production, fisheries, or natural resource-based tourism. Currently, most of the jobs in resource production and management bypass the local economyand education opportunities in natural resources taught at the community high school are not aimed at preparing high school students to fill local employment needs that will help fill this rural Alaska skills gap.The Alaska K-12 Natural resource and Agriculture Professional Development project seeks to increase inclusion of place-based Agri-science lessons in Alaska schools by helping certified teachers, many of whom are teaching outside of their qualified discipline, to be better prepared as both practitioners and teachers of natural resource and agriculture content areas. This will be done through the development and delivery of week-long immersive professional development training for Alaska K-12 teachers. These courses will introduce subject specific content in several agricultural and natural resource areas including ethnobotany, marine ecology, natural resources, environmental science, and resilient food systems. Teachers will spend a week immersed in place-based education and develop techniques to deliver culturally-relevant lessons in the Agri-sciences.The ultimate goal of this project is for teachers to return to their classroom with knowledge of Agri-science content and careers and that they incorporate this into their classroom teaching. In this way, the professional development indirectly will touch many K-12 students throughout the state of Alaska and will provide potential opportunities for these K-12 students to pursue education and careers in the Agri-sciences.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
Project Goal Statement:This four-year project will provide direct, immersive professional development to approximately 120 certified K-12 school teachers living and teaching in predominantly rural Alaska.AK12PD will introduce rural and remote Alaskan teachers to natural resource and agriculture content by providing them with direct experience in the fields of Natural Resources and Agriculture; subjects that are not traditionally taught in elementary and secondary schools. In addition, the project will introduce methods to incorporate culturally relevant place-based teaching into instruction, and leverage methods that honor local Indigenous Knowledge (IK) into the teaching of natural resource and agriculture content. AK12PD courses use a one-week culturally-rich content immersion as the main instructional activity, aiming to support teachers' place-based, culturally relevant knowledge, awareness, and practical skills in order to develop lesson plans for their classes the subsequent year.Objectives:1. Develop three new courses and revise three existing courses to create a total of 6 professional development courses that align natural resources and agriculture content with culturally relevant place-based education principles2. Recruit, train, and support 120 teachers in designing and implementing place-based and culturally relevant natural resource and agriculture units3. Increaseteacher awareness of Agri-science careers through increased exposure to natural resource and agricutlure professionals during 1-week professional development courses.4. Develop a professional mentor network of educators and natural resource managers to support teachers with implementation of culturally relevant place-based natural resource and agriculture education
Project Methods
Each for Teachers course will include six full days of instruction and have a class size of ten. The courses are scheduled to occur in May and June. The courses will take place throughout southcentral Alaska, including, but not limited to, Valdez, Cordova, and McCarthy, Alaska. The for Teachers model of professional development emphasizes place-based, culturally relevant learning and models this through outdoor classrooms, experiences, and networking with content experts working in the field. Locations will be selected based on the theme of the course and the resources, both natural and professional, that an area offers.Each course will use a collection of experts who use a balanced approach of individual and group instruction to deliver content-rich, standards-based instruction that infuses culturally relevant, place-based natural resource and agriculture education into the subject that they are teaching. The course work in the for Teachers model occurs during the immersive summer course. However, teachers are encouraged to participate in a follow-up activity in the fall that documents implementation of the material taught during the professional development. Teachers completing a for Teachers course will receive three credits of 500-level professional development credit plus an additional one credit for the Fall practicum, which they can use to meet their 6-credit re-certification requirement.The schedule of activities will vary from course to course, but the general plan calls for a morning discussion that is split between place-based teaching pedagogy and Agri-science content knowledge. The remainder of the day will be spent modeling place-based teaching; moving the classroom outside. Field-based activities will be organized around that week's subject area and will re-enforce content skills and knowledge as well as demonstrate lessons that might be used in the classroom. Many of these field activities will be led by partner organizations providing a direct link for teachers to professionals working in the natural resource or agriculture industry. In addition, there will be several less formal evening presentations that may involve local content experts.A continuous improvement model will be used for course evaluation during the week of course delivery. Daily formative assessment in the form of "Exit Tickets," will be used and summative assessment will occur in the form of written lesson plans and a slide presentation.The courses will be assessed at the completion of each week using classroom assessment techniques in accordance with the University of Alaska Anchorage's curriculum assessment guidelines. IDEA surveys will be used for course evaluation and will provide anonymous quantitative data in the form of numeric scores for questions and qualitative data in the form of student comments to specialized questions. Instructors will collect and use assessment data to support curriculum modifications, and data will be shared with the AK12PD advisory board to support program modifications in a continuous quality improvement model.Educator outcomes will be measured through pre and post course surveys. The pre-course survey will measure prior knowledge in the course content, PBE, and inclusion of IK in lessons. A post-course survey at the end of the school year will measure inclusion of Agri-science course content, PBE, and IK in the classroom with feedback on success or challenges. Participating teachers will be encouraged to survey student's knowledge and interest in Agri-science fields pre and post teaching of their lesson/unit to see if the students are more likely to pursue education and/or a career in a related field.