Abstract
The Scientist in Every Florida School (SEFS) program was started in 2019 with a long-term vision to connect Earth systems scientists with public K-12 schools in Florida and therefore create long-term scientist-teacher partnerships. SEFS fulfills teacher requests to create personalized, meaningful, and impactful experiences to support teacher pedagogy and student learning. As part of our mission, we have a focus on mainstream, particularly Title I, schools and are committed to working with at-risk teachers. The major components of our program include scientist-teacher partnerships, focused professional development workshops on Florida’s Earth systems (air, water, land, and life), classroom visits, and other web-based activities. Although still only in its first few years, the project and its more than 600 scientists have a wide reach with over 850 teachers and 53,000 students. Notably, the programs were delivered virtually in the 2020-2021 school year reaching nearly 60% of Florida’s 67 counties. In this article, we describe our programmatic features and provide recommendations for others to implement similar programs.
Highlights
Florida is on the front lines of massive Earth systems changes that are threatening the environment, economy, and our way of life
Between July 2019 and February 2020, we developed a comprehensive slate of in-person classroom visits, district-focused professional development (PD), and web-based activities
Once Scientist in Every Florida School (SEFS) collects an adequate number of teacher and scientist STEPS survey data, we will perform a confirmatory factor analysis to determine whether the items load onto the two factors that underlie the survey design
Summary
Florida is on the front lines of massive Earth systems changes that are threatening the environment, economy, and our way of life. Earth systems refer to the interaction of air (atmosphere), water (hydrosphere), land (geosphere), and life (biosphere), and how humans impact them. Current research indicates that educating the generation about societally relevant issues such as climate change is vital for developing a scientifically literate public empowered to take action regarding these issues (e.g., Hahn, 2021; Peterson et al, 2019). The emphasis on K-12 learners will hopefully lead to greater change because they are likely more receptive than adults to learning about current Earth systems topics (Ennes, 2021; Kahan, 2012; Stevenson et al, 2014). Science often takes the backseat in the K-12 school system, despite its contribution to social and economic progress (Marincola, 2006). The marginalization of science instruction is true in elementary schools where some teachers lack the background, confidence, or mandate to teach science (Menon and Sadler, 2016; Plumley, 2019)
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