PERCIM: STEM Teaching PD in Colombia

Currently professional development (PD) for teachers is limited to one time workshops that are ineffective at creating change in instructional practice. Additionally, PD for teachers lacks personalization that connects to their classroom teaching experiences. Programa de enseñanza reflexivo para ciencias, matemáticas e ingeniería (PERCIM), currently a two semester program for professors at the Universidad de los Andes, will be offered to secondary school teachers throughout Colombia virtually. The program adopts the cognitive apprenticeship format with three phases and creates a community of practice among a cohort of teachers in synchronous and asynchronous sessions for one year. During the second and third phases the teachers drastically improve their instructional practice by receiving feedback from program facilitators and their cohort that is personalized to their teaching goals. Teachers not only gain a wealth of theory and practical knowledge, but support to create long lasting change that will impact student learning.

Access to quality STEM education in secondary science schools is not equitable among all economic levels in Colombia. Colombia, which is stratified socioeconomically, has secondary schools with resources that rival with universities, but others fail to provide computers, technology, or lab spaces to their teachers. Colombianas are less likely to pursue STEM with only 40% majoring in STEM at the university level. Teacher preparation programs that are specific to STEM teaching and facilitated by a professional with expertise in pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for STEM are rare. In fact at Universidad de los Andes, the degree for science education is mostly facilitated by educators that are not science teachers. Teachers need expertise in both STEM content and have PCK to teach their subject well to secondary students. Without quality teacher training in STEM, we cannot improve the percentages ofs students pursuing STEM from all socioeconomic levels. All teachers regardless of their class need access to professional development that provides personalized feedback on their practice, not just theory, to improve their ability to teach and inspire students to pursue STEM. By influencing the teaching at all socioeconomic levels, we can have a greater impact on the exposure to quality STEM education. 

PERCIM applies the cognitive apprenticeship framework over the duration of a year through a community of practice (CoP) and aspects of social cognitive theory of learning and self-regulated learning (SRL). Funding is needed to create the virtual platform for all 3 phases of PERCIM:

Phase 1, Elicitation, contains workshops that teach theory and model practical aspects of STEM teaching based on best research practices.

In phase 2, Integration and reflection, teachers create specific teaching and learning goals that are based on their experiences in Phase 1 and personalized to their teaching contexts. They receive feedback on their goals and how to implement them, as they monitor and evaluate their progress towards their teaching goal. Using a protocol that creates intense positive collaboration, a group of 3-4 teachers share short videos of their teaching and brainstorm methods for improving the teaching and learning strategy that is aligned with the teacher's goal.

In phase 3, teachers reconstruct their teaching and learning goals. They will receive feedback similar to phase 2 from both the facilitators and the CoP.

Percim will be adapted for a virtual cohort starting in January of 2021 to increase accessibility and opportunities for all teachers. 

PERCIM is a professional development program that supports STEM teachers to improve their instructional practices by providing theoretical and practical learning experiences with personalized feedback fromfacilitators and their CoP developed through participation in a cohort. At this time PERCIM only serves professors at the Universidad de los Andes, but we want to expand the program and create a track for secondary STEM teachers. Knowing that the economy of Colombia is diverse, we want to use a low income client model to provide scholarships that cover the costs of almost 50% of the participants. PERCIM provides the tools for STEM teachers to become autonomous in their own growth and development, skills that will lead to continued improvement in their teaching years after their participation. Because enrollment at universities in Colombia is composed of only 40% females in the STEM majors, we hope to target females especially. Given that PERCIM is facilitated by a female professor at Universidad de los Andes, we want to empower more female STEM educators to become leaders and role models for their female students. These professors will greatly enhance their teaching through the individualized feedback they receive as they integrate best practices from STEM education research. 

Expanding PERCIM into the secondary schools will provide informal training to female STEM educators, who may not have access to high quality professional development or the ability to collaborate with other female STEM teachers. By increasing the competency of secondary school STEM teachers, we increase the quality of STEM education provided to all students. With an emphasis on female participants in PERCIM, we create more female role models in STEM. Through participation in a professional development by Universidad de los Andes, a top ranking Latin American university, they will build connections to advocate for their students interested in STEM.

According to Lumpe (2007), the one-time professional development produces little impact on changing the practices of professors. It is through repeated interactions that changes in beliefs and practices can occur, not because of the intervention itself (Peterman, 1993). A long lasting PD with opportunities for discussion and exchanges of experience produces the greatest impact on changes in beliefs about teaching and learning, which affects changes in instructional practices. It is the process of change not just a single moment of information acquisition provided by a workshop that leads to the change in instructional practice. Thus professional development must occur over extended time to build upon current mental schemas and change pre-existing mental models that are erroneous with the research of teaching and learning (Bianchini & Cavazos, 2007). Extended professional development programs allow for opportunities for collaboration and feedback about their progress and development. This change in belief and ultimately instructional cannot occur without opportunities for reflection and application.

Just as with student learners, professor learners also need authentic contexts and environments for their professional development in order to engage in deeper understanding (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Research has shown that learning is situational and based on shared experiences. Learners need opportunities to apply and integrate their understanding into specific authentic contexts or otherwise those concepts remain abstract and not concrete learning moments. As the research indicates, PERCIM aims to include authentic contexts for learning both during the elicitation phase, as well as during the integration and reflection phase.

Funding is needed for this solution for two technology related purposes. Primarily to create a platform to virtualize PERCIM. Currently PERCIM is conducted all through in person sessions. Given that PERCIM has already been established, we only need to design the course in a virtual setting. This is a highly interactive program in which teachers must engage as the role of learner and participate in activities that model student centered teaching. They also will engage in many work and discussions in pairs and groups to include the socialization of learning aspects that serves as one of the three pillars of learning. During phase 2 and 3 participants will need to be able to share their short video clips with other participants to review them. 

Many of the teachers do not have their own personal computers or tablets. In order to be fully engaged in this CoP we would like for teachers to all have equal access. For our first cohort we will have teachers from Colegio de los Angeles and Colegio Marymount. The teachers at Colegio de los Angeles do not have access to computers or tablets in their classrooms. They are able to borrow one or they may use a personal device. We would like to establish a scholarship program in which teachers that need a computer or tablet can receive one with the understanding they will use it to engage in the CoP of PERCIM and for their classroom teaching. 

Given that this PD occurs over the course of a year, professors that are engaged the entire time have the greatest changes as measured by data collected with the RTOP for their classroom teaching. The changes are very observable in that they all adopt more student centered instruction and also continue to make further plans for continual growth and development. In fact, teachers that finish the 10-month program, maintain contact with the facilitators. They also adopt data driven practices and collect data through self-made diagnostic tests, well established concept inventories, or utilize the Test of Scientific Literacy (TOSL) to measure skills. These professors continue to reflect and make changes based on the data collected. Contrary to this, some professors drop out after the first phase of workshops and do not value the other two phases of the program. These professors have minimal changes in their instructional practice as measured by the RTOP. They continue to use more teacher centered approaches such as lectures. We currently have several publications in progress that show significant changes in teachers beliefs and attitudes about teaching as measured by the Teacher Belief Interview (Luft & Roehrig 2007) and significant changes in their Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol scores. Teachers that were most engaged with the program had greater increases in their scores for the TBI and RTOP, with some RTOP scores, which are on a scale of 0 to a 100, almost doubling from scores in the 30s and 40s range to that in the 70s. 

PERCIM has three distinct phases according to the Cognitive Apprenticeship model (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989). These three phases, elicitation, reflection, and reconstruction. During the first phase, the elicitation phase, professors participate in workshops that include topics of teaching and learning, research based instructional strategies (RBIS) for STEM teaching, and fundamental concepts for STEM education like Nature of Science (NOS) and Scientific Inquiry (SI). Participants begin the second phase, the Integration and Reflection Phase, by creating goal, action, monitoring, and evaluation plans. It is during this phase that professors also participate in peer review of their instructional practice so that they can receive feedback from facilitators and their colleagues regarding aspects of their teaching they wish to grow and develop. In the third phase, professors reinvent themselves as reflective teachers and thus redefine their courses and instructional practices.

Much research has been done on how humans learn, but we can narrow it down to 3 major components: learning has a cognitive development aspect, a social influence, and is dependent on motivation. While these theoretical constructs are applied to students, they can also be applied to adult learners, such as professors. Eggen and Kauchak (2004) summarized, learners take an active role to understand and interpret their experiences, learners construct knowledge based on previous knowledge and their perceptions, and learning is a change in a person’s mental construct of their surroundings. This framework of learning will focus on 3 prominent themes: the cognitive development aspects of learning, the role of social interactions, and the necessity of motivation and engagement to drive learning. 

By applying aspects of learning to the professional development given to STEM teachers, we can improve the changes that will be made on their instructional practices and not just their beliefs about teaching. Research has shown that in order to increase opportunities for students in STEM at the tertiary level, access to quality STEM teachers in their secondary schools is essential. Thus we can improve the interest and quality of STEM education, by providing PERCIM, a professional development based on best research practices for teacher training. 

Currently PERCIM only accepts 15 professors from the Universidad de los Andes each year into its cohort. We are limited by the amount of time required for observations, since each professor receives 4-5 full observations. Each teaches 40-100 students per semester, who are directly impacted and benefit from the improved teaching practices, so in total approximately 1,200 to 3,000 students have a teacher participating in the university track of PERCIM each year. In order to scale the project up and expand into the secondary schools, we will need to hire a research assistant. Depending on the amount of funding received will determine the dedicated amount of time for the assistant. With a full time program and research manager for the project, we can accept 45 teachers from secondary schools throughout Colombia each year. If we only receive a part time graduate research assistant, we will be limited to only 15 secondary school teachers each year. Thus during 2021, we anticipate 15 professors from Universidad de los Andes in the university track of PERCIM and 15-45 secondary school teachers in the secondary school track of PERCIM. We estimate 450 - 3,375 secondary school students will have a secondary STEM teacher participating in PERCIM. The number varies because some teachers have smaller classes located in rural areas with less students, while others rotate among classes and teach more students throughout the day. We anticipate our annual impact to stay the same each year of the program. 

Not only would we like to expand our program into the secondary schools, but we also would like to expand into the international market. One such possibility is a collaboration with a company such as Coursera. We personally have already had meetings with a Coursera representative that visited the School of Science at Universidad de los Andes. Launching the course on Coursera could result in growth of both the university track and the secondary school track into the international market. This will allow us to hire additional employees to manage the course and the data, as well as conduct the peer review sessions, which are extremely valuable for individual teach growth and development of their teaching practices. While PERCIM does last a year, we could potentially maintain a cohort of 45 professors in addition to the 15 from Uniandes, if we hire a full time employee dedicated to the university track. If we can hire a full time program manager for the secondary schools track we can maintain 45 teachers a year. There is a possibility to add more with the use of graduate assistants. It is important to note the direct impacts on the students and the learning experience. In the first year alone the teachers will impact thousands of students, but teachers will continue to impact the following years of students, so our impact grows exponentially. The skills learned will have impacts for years and years of students in their classes. 

Currently we are set to operate the program in January 2021 with a cohort of 15 secondary science teachers. The university track of PERCIM with 15 professors will continue as it currently does with a start date of March 2021 during our semester break. We do not have an issue with recruitment at this scale, as we already have a waitlist for participation for each track. In order for us to scale up the program, we need to virtualize the program and have funding to hire someone to transition the current materials into an online platform. We will also need funding to purchase that platform. If we want to expand into the international market and grow our participation numbers each year, we will need to establish a relationship with a company such as Coursera, possible a collaboration with the Ministry of Education or other government entities to provide official professional credits or certificates, and additional funding to hire dedicated staff such as a program manager for each track of PERCIM. We would need funding for the first 2 years, but should be sustainable afterwards. 

Conversations with Coursera have already begun. Being a top ranking university in Latin America they have approached us for a potential partnership. It is possible to offer PERCIM as one of several courses that we would offer through coursera. However until then, we will need to offer the course on a platform. We can use our university system, blackboard, but will eventually need to consider another platform such as Ruzuku that has features to improve the functionality to an audience outside of the university. As mentioned previously we have the capacity to launch the secondary school track of PERCIM and continue the current university track next year with no barriers. In order to scale the program up and increase the cohort for both the university track and the secondary school track to 45 participants, we will need to apply for grants and other sources of funding to hire 2 full time program managers. We are exploring options for grants now. However it is expected after the first 2 years, if we maintain enough enrollment we can be sustainable to financially support the salary of the 2 fulltime program managers and offer full financial assistance scholarships to 20 secondary school teachers and 10 university professors supplying each of them with their own personal device such as the Galaxy Tab S6.

At the present moment, I facilitate the program myself as part of my normal contracted job duties for professors at the University of the Andes. I receive minor assistance from administrative staff and other staff members from the dean's office in the school of science. We currently have a contractor creating a website and a translator for our electronic book, The Teaching STEM Toolbox, which is a resource for PERCIM. I do have a research assistant that helps me occasionally with the program. 

I have a balance of theory and practical knowledge and skills in both science and science education. My teaching experience is diverse in that I have taught science at the middle, high school, community college, and university level for the last 17 years. My teaching has been recognized as exemplary and I received the Houston Science Teacher of the Year Award in 2016. I have completed both science content bachelor and masters degrees,  as well as a masters and phd in science curriculum and instruction. I have served as a curriculum writer, mentor teacher, and science department chair throughout my career. I also teach science pedagogy courses. Currently, I am a professor at the Universidad de los Andes, serving as a pedagogical coach for professors, as well as consultant for local schools. 

The School of Science at Universidad de los Andes supports my work by providing networking opportunities with the ability to reach regions of Colombia that are more rural and beyond the major metropolis areas. As a leading university in South America, they are well-positioned as a point of contact for secondary schools looking for support in improvement of science teaching. They also provide support through a website for the Centro para Exito de Ciencias to share resources with the larger community beyond Uniandes. They also are providing support to publish and distribute an electronic book, The Teaching STEM Toolbox, that accompanies the PERCIM program.

Currently, several schools with secondary science programs have agreed for participation in this project including Marymount Colegio and Colegio los Angeles, both are schools for only female students. We will also partner with an informal education, Common Tides, that provides marine science education to low socioeconomic communities in the Caribbean. Additionally, Servicio Geologico Colombiano, an organization that provides informal education through outreach activities at their museum and for visiting schools, has requested to participate. The Universidad de los Andes has relationships with other schools that PERCIM has yet been advertised to as of yet.

Due to the current pandemic, we will virtualize the program, which will allow us to open enrollment to any secondary science or STEM related teacher in Colombia. The School of Science at the Universidad de los Andes will provide support to network throughout regions of Colombia to provide opportunities to more teachers. The School of Science is also providing support to publish an electronic book, The Teaching STEM Toolbox, which accompanies the PERCIM program, and a website that has resources for science teaching for professors, students, graduate students, and the Colombian community beyond the Universidad de los Andes.

We will adopt a low-income client business model, which will allow those that cannot pay to participate in PERCIM or do not work for a school or organization that pay the related costs to participate at no cost. We currently partner with several schools such as Colegio de Marymount that are able to afford the fees of 3,000,000 COP ($810 USD at the exchange rate of 3700 COP = 1 USD) for their teachers to participate in the 1 year professional development program. Also we will target the more affluent schools that partner with a sister school to help sponsor the costs. Initially grant funding will be needed to cover subscription fees for the online learning platform, the tablets for those receiving scholarships, and the salary of 2 full time managers. After the first two years of grant funding, we hope to attain enough paying participants to fully fund a scholarship for at least 20 secondary school teachers each year in Colombia and 10 professors internationally from institutions unable to pay the professional development fees. If we maintain an enrollment of 45 for each track of PERCIM, we will be able to financially support the salary of 2 fulltime program managers, one for each track. We will also be able to provide tablets to those receiving the scholarship and cover the subscription costs for a platform such as Rukuzu. We would have approximately 20% of our budget remaining to cover indirect costs and overhead and incidentals. 

We will adopt a low-income client business model, which will allow those that cannot pay to participate in PERCIM or do not work for a school or organization that pay the related costs to participate at no cost. We currently partner with several schools such as Colegio de Marymount that are able to afford the fees of 3,000,000 COP ($810 USD at the exchange rate of 3700 COP = 1 USD) for their teachers to participate in the 1 year professional development program. Also we will target the more affluent schools that partner with a sister school to help sponsor the costs. Initially grant funding will be needed to cover subscription fees for the online learning platform, the tablets for those receiving scholarships, and the salary of 2 full time managers. After the first two years of grant funding, we hope to attain enough paying participants to fully fund a scholarship for at least 20 secondary school teachers each year in Colombia and 10 professors internationally from institutions unable to pay the professional development fees. If we maintain an enrollment of 45 for each track of PERCIM, we will be able to financially support the salary of 2 fulltime program managers, one for each track. We will also be able to provide tablets to those receiving the scholarship and cover the subscription costs for a platform such as Rukuzu. We would have approximately 20% of our budget remaining to cover indirect costs and overhead and incidentals. 

We are applying to Solve because it would be beneficial to receive support and advice on how to launch the course and expand into the international market. It would also help us continue to offer the program using a low-income client business model, to make the program accessible to our teachers in Colombia. We seek support to receive grant funding for the first 2 years and how to establish relationships with organizations such as Coursera or edX, as well as government entities. 

I am extremely passionate about helping others to love teaching and learning STEM as much as I do. Teachers possess the ability to make their passion for STEM infectious to their students. I want to help teachers through my experience, both theoretical and as a classroom teacher of 17 years, find the joy of teaching and reduce barriers that hinder their success. PERCIM has been highly successful thus far and we have a waitlist for future participation. My biggest barrier now is that I cannot meet the demand with only myself doing physical in person courses. I need to scale the program larger.

The area of most support is solution technology because we need to transition the existing PERCIM to a virtual platform. This will require reformatting the material and creating virtual resources accessible through the platform. Given our expertise is delivering such programs with experts in teaching and learning for STEM, we do not have expertise with programming or making virtual resources.

There are two types of organizations that would be useful for us to partner. The first would be an organization such as Coursera or edX that provides online platforms for education courses that we can offer within our university structure including professors and Colombian teachers participating in PERCIM, but also attract an international market. Such a partnership could be beneficial for beyond just the virtualization and internationalization of PERCIM, but other courses offered by Universidad de los Andes, which is consistently ranked in the top ten universities in Latin American. Through this partnership we will receive help to develop the course on the platform, but also advertise the course to a larger market. 

The second partnership includes relationships with other organizations including those that are government related such as the Ministry of Education in Colombia to advertise and attract a wider audience of secondary STEM teachers other than those within are networking capabilities. These organizations both Colombian and international should be education related and can help align our initiative with similar purposes within Colombia so that we can better equip STEM teachers with the necessary skills and professional development to improve their teaching. A relationship with the MInistry of Education could provide support for participation in the form of teachers receiving a certificate or license for completion that is recognized by the Colombian government. 

We can include refugees from our neighboring country of Venezula, that wish to participate. 

We hope to include a greater percentage of females in our program. Since the facilitator is female, we hope this will empower other females to be strong role models in STEM education in their own schools.

We hope to include a greater percentage of females in our program. Since the facilitator is female, we hope this will empower other females to be strong role models in STEM education in their own schools.