Rural Teachers Learning Bioanalytical Engineering

Abstract

Professional development opportunities provide teachers with enhanced learning experiences, deeper subject knowledge, and improvement of their teaching practices, all for the goal of increasing student achievement (Nelson, 2009). Unfortunately, most rural teachers have much less access to professional development opportunities compared to their urban and suburban peers (Hardré, P.L., et al., 2014). A Research Experience for Teachers (RET ), which is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded program, was created for rural high school math and science teachers in collaboration with the University of Oklahoma and the Center for Bioanalysis. As participants, teachers applied and were accepted to participate in a seven-week summer research experience to connect bioanalytical engineering and their research experiences into their classrooms and to stimulate their students’ critical thinking skills. The following narrative and analysis chronicle the teams’ design, development and learning experience in redesigning the seven-week professional development for rural science and math teachers.