Program Description

The Authentic Teaching Alliance (ATA) is a three-year educational outreach program between the College of Engineering and the College of Education at the University of Oklahoma. ATA teams secondary science and mathematics teachers with advanced undergraduate and graduate students (i.e., ATA Fellows) in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and science and mathematics education, to design, develop, and implement authentic science and mathematics activities. Authentic teaching involves inquiry-based, hands-on instruction that is related in a meaningful fashion to the students' community; their community being their classroom, school, neighborhood, city, state or nation. Therefore, an authentic lesson may be different for an urban student compared to a rural student. An example of an authentic lesson on aquatic ecosystems, which ATA is currently developing for Fall 2003, involves rural students in investigating how to control the life cycle of mosquitoes that are vectors for West Nile virus, a virus that is crippling Oklahoma's horse industry. Urban students will study aquatic ecosystems in the context of how to use and manage urban runoff in order to create urban parks with healthy ponds and water gardens.

To date, over 20 "teacher-ready" ATA activities, focusing on physical science, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, are posted on the ATA web site ( www.coe.ou.edu/ata ). Moreover, these lessons are aligned with the State of Oklahoma's education standards (PASS skills). ATA's goal with respect to these lessons is not to create totally new curriculum, but rather to demonstrate how to teach secondary science and mathematics in an authentic manner. Creating authentic lessons is not trivial; the students' background, culture, environment, and interests must be well understood, respected and appreciated. In order to facilitate this level of understanding and appreciation for secondary students among ATA teachers and Fellows, the ATA teachers and Fellows work closely together as a team for at least one to two semesters. To date, ATA has interacted with 11 science teachers, 5 mathematics teachers, and 1 technology teacher, while reaching approximately 1400 students, in 2 middle and 8 secondary schools, with truly authentic instruction.

Graduate Fellows spend approximately twenty hours per week on this program. Undergraduate Fellows spend approximately fifteen hours per week on this program. Both graduate and undergraduate fellows spend ten of their hours in K-12 classrooms. Managing the program is a full-time job (40 hours per week) for the project coordinator and also includes approximately ten hours a week from the principle investigator.

Program Outcomes

We typically have ten to thirteen graduate students from all STEM areas as well as graduate students in science and mathematics education. Despite the extra effort, authentic instruction is effective. Our student assessment results show that for all ATA schools combined, the attitude survey responses at the end of the year were more positive than those at the start of the school year. In particular, significantly more students agreed that engineering would be a good career for women and indicated that engineering could be considered a potential career for themselves. With respect to the authentic learning experience surveys, responses on the post experience survey were more positive in all schools. ATA students indicated a greater presence of authentic teaching practices during the past year. For all schools combined, a significant increase in authentic teaching was reported in the math classes and in the students' overall exposure to authentic teaching.

Several new K-12 and higher education programs have been designed as a result of the success of this program. Specifically, we will implement a Engineering Summer Academy, Engineering Weekend Academy, and a dual graduate degree in Engineering Education. This last item was developed in response to the strong interest of engineering graduate students in such a program.

Program Implementation

An immense investment of faculty and staff time is required to properly implement this program. Trying to bridge the University and K-12 schools is a large task; much too large for any one person or even a small group of faculty; an effort of this magnitude needs to have dedicated staff. A program coordinator is essential in order to handle the numerous daily details. Strong support and "buy-in" from the university administration and K-12 school districts is also required.

The program has a significant budgetary component as well. Funds must be available to provide stipends for both graduate and undergraduate fellows, to purchase equipment required to conduct long-term or advanced experiments at the K-12 school site, to travel to various school locations, and to provide salary for the administrative support staff.