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Perspectives on Deepening Teachers' Science Content Knowledge: The Case of the Life Sciences for a Global Community Teacher Institute

Abstract

"The Life Sciences for a Global Community (LSGC) Teacher Institute is a collaboration among Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri Botanical Gardens, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and St. Louis Public Schools to establish an advanced degree program and leadership training for teams of high school biology teachers. The three-year degree program includes a total of nine week-long summer courses focused on disciplinary content. Academic year coursework focused on pedagogical strategies for incorporating new content into teachers' classrooms. As an example, the Evolutionary Ecology summer course addressed major ecological theories through investigations that focused on a research question, data collection and analysis related to the question, and interpretation of the analytic results. The Program Capstone 1 course was taught by science educators as a distance-learning course during the academic year; participating teachers engaged in action research around their implementation of curricular pieces they developed based on content and pedagogical strategies they encountered at the Institute."

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