The College of Education hosted more than 100 Houston area science teachers in July for professional development provided by the STEM Teaching Equity Project (STEP). Teachers completed 40 - 60 hours of training led by UH STEM and Education faculty, STEP staff, and K12 master science teachers. STEP training enhances teachers’ science content knowledge and inquiry-based instructional strategies.

Each STEP participant also receives over $1000 in technology and classroom instructional materials. The summer institutes kicked-off two, yearlong training programs for science teachers in grades 4-6 and high school physics. During 2015-16, STEP participants came from 19 school districts and 4 charter school networks and will impact over 5,000 K12 students.

“STEP’s goal is to enhance the science education experience of every K12 student in the greater Houston area, regardless of socioeconomic status, race or gender,” stated Wallace Dominey, Executive Director of STEP. “By providing professional development to K12 science teachers in science content and exemplary, research-based instructional strategies, we leverage our impact on K12 students.” 

Krystal Weiss, a STEP participant and fifth grade science teacher from Memorial Drive Elementary in Spring Branch ISD describes her experience at the STEP summer institute and how she sees the experience impacting her students.

“I was very appreciative to see that there was a strong emphasis on developing our students as thinkers and not just spoon feeding them content knowledge. In all sessions there was ample opportunity for us to explore the content in new ways. We were pushed as thinkers. Students are very used to memorizing content and then recalling it for a test. Inquiry based instruction helps students become thinkers by putting the process of learning on them and allowing them to fully master the content, not just memorize it.”

STEP is a community outreach program within the College of Education and is conducted in partnership with the College of Natural Science and Mathematics and supported by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Teacher Quality Grants Program and the Texas Regional Collaboratives for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching. Principal Investigators are Dr. Wallace Dominey of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education and Drs. Margaret Cheung and Rebecca Forrest of the Department of Physics in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.