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Built to last: Professional development through teacher community. Prepared for PhysTEC May 2014 Conference Colleen Megowan-Romanowicz PhD Executive Officer, AMTA. Fast Facts about Modeling Instruction TM. Modeling Instruction TM has been in use since 1989
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Built to last: Professional development through teacher community Prepared for PhysTEC May 2014 Conference Colleen Megowan-Romanowicz PhD Executive Officer, AMTA
Fast Facts about Modeling InstructionTM • Modeling InstructionTM has been in use since 1989 • Over 6000 teachers have attended Modeling Workshops (over 3000 in physics) • 10% of US physics teachers self-identify as “Modelers” • NSF support for Physics Modeling expired in 2005
Fast Facts about AMTA • AMTA was founded by 25 high school physics teachers in 2005. current membership: 1600 • AMTA has taken over responsibility for the Modeling Teacher community and for organizing and servicing Modeling Workshops nationwide and providing access to resources • AMTA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, an affiliate organization of AAPT and NSTA and a 100Kin10 partner organization.
Why are you here? What kinds of communities do we want to create and/or maintain?
The goal for today • To learn about each others’ communities and community needs • To engage in a process that can be used to create a strategic plan for building the community we want. • To produce and share a few “worked examples” of community strategic plans (in outline form)
The process • Define • Assess • Conduct research • Design activities • Monitor & Evaluate • Use PD
Define • Define the community of interest • Define the challenges that members of this community have in common • Define the desired outcomes/preferred future
Assess the population(what you’ve got AND what you want) • Characteristics • Behaviors • Practices
Conduct “research” • “Scout the territory” • Interview, observe, discuss • Identify areas of commonality • Identify uncommon practices & strategies of outliers
Design activities to produce effective behaviors/strategies • Spend some time exploring the first and second order implications of the activities you design More students major in physics Attendees are not really interested in physics Physics Department hosts “Red Carpet Day” for HS students More faculty take an interest in undergrad recruiting There’s not enough food Attendees get a negative impression of the physics department More faculty members volunteer to host REUs
Monitor and Evaluate • Listen • Ask questions • Survey • (actually read and report on the survey responses!) • Institute a system for incorporating community feedback into activity planning
Address widespread, intractable, complex problems • Professional development • Institutional change • What else?
Share your community model For a copy of these slides visit http://modelinginstruction.org/?p=3535