Project NEO

The number of STEM majors needed to meet the expected needs of our future workforce will grow, yet fewer students are choosing to major in STEM areas, and those who do may be underprepared (Broussard, La Lopa, and Ross-Davis, 2007; Langdon, McKittrick, Beede, Khan, & Doms, 2011). This has led many to suggest that middle school students should be targeted for improving STEM competency and career interest, yet evidence suggests that their teachers are themselves underprepared (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Llewellyn, 2002). Further, middle school students can only benefit if they have the foundational STEM knowledge from their elementary school years, which is often not the case (Ball, Lubienski, and Mewborn, 2005; Wu, 1999). In part, this results from elementary teachers’ weaknesses in procedural and conceptual understanding (Hawk, Coble, and Swanson, 1985). Unlike middle school and high school science teachers, who must meet credentialing requirements to ensure competency in their disciplines, elementary teachers teach all subjects and are not credentialed in any subject. During their college education, most elementary teachers are exposed to science content only through lower-division college courses that are not necessarily aligned with teaching standards (California Council on Science and Technology, 2010). Because elementary teachers typically graduate from college with a weak understanding of scientific principles, they lack confidence in and enthusiasm for teaching science (Jarrett, 1999; Stevens & Wenner, 1996). Therefore, interventions planned for the middle school level must be preceded by interventions for elementary teachers (Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2005), and they must begin during preservice teacher (PST) education, before teaching habits and philosophies are formed.