Sessions Strands

AAFT is an initiative of the Atlanta Public Schools & Georgia State University. The purpose of AAFT is to recruit bright, talented, and diverse rising junior and senior high school students to consider science and mathematics teaching as a rewarding career. Through participation in a three week summer AAFT program, students collaborate with university faculty and master teachers.

Session Leaders

Georgia Computes! is a statewide vertical alliance dedicated to greatly increasing the number and diversity of students interested in computer science in Georgia. Some goals for K-12 are to get a 50% increase in the number of high schools offering Computer Science (CS) Advanced Placement (AP) and to double the percentage of women and minorities taking CS AP.To achieve these goals, Georgia Computes! offers teacher workshops and student workshops and summer camps.

Session Leaders

This session will explore the content and pedagogical enhancement facilitated in a learning community of K-5 teachers and administrators as they engaged in professional learning courses leading to a P-5 Mathematics endorsement. Specifically, this session will present the findings of the case study and outline changes in participants' content knowledge, discuss the development of the participants as a learning community, and present information regarding participants' beliefs about their mathematics learning.

Session Leaders

This session will present activities that contributed to an instructional paradigm for infusing mathematics into science and technology. These were (1) the development of a math infusion lesson planning template; (2) a yearlong professional development and curriculum revision activity; and (3) a pilot study of the efficacy and effectiveness of the math infusion model. This work is part of a National Science Foundation funded MSP project to improve middle school mathematics teaching and student performance.

Session Presenters

Success in STEM requires an ability to reason logically and consistently using a premise or hypothesis. However, the reasoning skills so necessary for success in STEM may not be common among incoming students. A study is underway at Columbus State University (CSU) to measure the level of scientific reasoning skills among students enrolled in STEM classes. The results of this study will be used to inform teaching practice and may affect future University course offerings.

Session Leaders

One component of quality teaching involves deep content knowledge. In this initiative, P-5 teachers completed an in-depth series of advanced mathematics courses (Understanding Number and Operations, Understanding Geometry, Understanding Algebra, and Understanding Data Analysis and Probability). Taught from the perspective of providing a foundation for P-5 students to understand advanced mathematics later, these courses resulted in increased mathematical content knowledge for teachers and changed pedagogical practices. Student achievement data, while preliminary, is promising.

Session Leaders

Under the Advanced Academy for Future Teachers (AAFT) program, we collaborated to design a program for high school students who had an interest in a teaching career in the area of Mathematics. The course materials provided the high school student with the opportunity to find out what it means to be a mathematics teacher through the many lessons, activities and projects. The design of the program and a description of student activities will be presented.

Session Presenters

A two year partnership between Jackson County Schools and faculty members at the University of Georgia, this project is designed to improve the quality of education for Jackson County School students by strengthening middle and high school math and science educational programs. The project has established a cadre of teachers dedicated to providing students with exemplary learning opportunities. The project also provides teachers with quality on-going professional learning to increase content and pedagogical knowledge.

Session Presenters

FOCUS (Fostering Our Community's Understanding of Science) is a partnership between the University of Georgia and local school districts that connects UGA students with elementary teachers to enhance the teaching of science in grades K-5. The presentation consists of three part: 1) program description and partnership evolution, 2) program evaluation with attention to lasting effects of FOCUS, and 3) research on how university students, faculty, and classroom teachers interact to negotiate Project FOCUS curricula.

Session Presenters

The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the impact that the P-5 Mathematics Endorsement had on student achievement as well as teacher pedagogical content knowledge. This endorsement offered sound content training along with the pedagogical knowledge required in today?s standards-based classroom. Three teachers from the Oconee County School System in Georgia will share their experiences from this course work. They will present evidence of the transformational effect from their training.

Session Presenters

This work shows the need for using feedbacks from students for improving course delivery. At a mid-size state university, we use the student course survey feedback to restructure the two networking courses in our Bachelor of information technology degree program to make them more hands-on and relevant to the real-world. Students like the hands-on approach and like to relate their experience to the real-world.

Session Presenters

Teach science through writing, and writing through science. Science journals provide an opportunity for success for all learners. Learn to capture a child's sense of wonderment between the pages of a learning journal. Use graphic organizers and mini-lessons to develop critical thinking skills, promote the power of observation, and follow the organization of the scientific process.

Session Presenters

This collaborative is designed to widen the spectrum of available, skilled workers in the southwestern Pennsylvania region. The collaborative enhanced our on-going partnerships with local stakeholders and created an apprenticeship program for the training of biotechnology/life sciences laboratory technicians. Specifically focus on assisting disadvantaged women who were displaced from the workforce early in their education due to the need to attend their families and the care of their children.

Session Leaders

The presentation will focus on the professional development model that evolved as mathematics teachers in a small, rural school system, Jefferson City Schools (JCS), in north Georgia worked to understand the mathematics content they were responsible for teaching in the newly developed state standards based curriculum.

Session Presenters

This presentation will showcase the effectiveness of a summer program to attract minority high school students into careers in teaching science/mathematics. The Advanced Academy for Future Teachers, a three-week summer program, is sponsored by Atlanta Public Schools and Georgia State University. The summer program's content focuses on elementary/secondary mathematics/science and skills of teaching. Over 69% of the participants reported that post-AAFT they were interested in a career in teaching. Both qualitative and quantitative data will be presented.

Session Presenters

Teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) has been found to impact teacher change (Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2004). This study examines teachers' development of MKT as they implement dynamic geometry software (DGS) with a coach. In addition, the study examines coaches' development of MKT as well as student understanding and attitudes. We found a relation between teachers' and coaches' expressions of MKT and their ways of using DGS. Student attitudes and understanding also improved.

Session Leaders

This panel presentation will provide a view of the changes taking place in Georgia's curriculum in science, mathematics and career and technology areas since 2004. Additionally, panelists will discuss how these changes are increasing students' readiness to enter post-secondary education and the work force.

Session Presenters

Using Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis of our test items we recognized the common misconceptions hampering student learning in general chemistry. Our instruction was changed to specifically address those issues. We determined that our grading scale for the last seven years has remained constant providing an absolute metric for determining effects of instructional change. We will address the student conceptual problems, discuss our class changes, and show our success in improving student learning.

Session Presenters