Science Foundation Arizona and Northern Arizona University partnered up to create a program that presents a unique opportunity for teachers to become part of a collaborative research team comprised of university science or mathematics faculty and undergraduate students. Teachers experienced first-hand the process of inquiry while deepening content knowledge related to the research area.
Teacher Research Fellows were immersed in the research experience while being exposed to cutting edge techniques and working to answer important questions. Fellows worked on projects that also included undergraduate students funded under the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates Program (REU) and other undergraduate research projects.
Fellows work together with one another and with education faculty to deepen their understanding of inquiry and pedagogy, and develop strategies to take the process and excitement of research back to their classrooms. To maintain the professional learning community that formed in the summer, the Teacher Research Fellows will continue to collaborate with each other during the school year through the development and refinement of lesson plans and the development of presentations to state level professional associations.
My experience was with the mathematics department, where Dr. Blows personalized a research experience that could work for us. We worked with discrete population modeling. This was at a mathematical level that we as educators could ease into and apply easily into our own classrooms. We spent time in lectures, learning about different modeling strategies and concepts, as well as participating in REU seminars that demonstrated to us the latest in mathematics study. We then spent the bulk of our time working on simulations and creating our own models based on individualized questions dealing with population.