MENTORING BETWEEN SCIENTISTS AND SCIENCE TEACHERS: CREATING DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIPS FOR STUDENT SUCCESS

This paper explores the mentoring relationships between university professors and/or science researchers (mentors) and 7-12th grade science teachers (teachers) participating in a NIDA-NIH funded Addiction Research and Investigation for Science (ARISE) program. The ARISE neuroscience education program targeted science teachers in California's Central Valley who had high numbers of English Learners (EL) students in their classrooms. An emphasis of the program was to improve the cultural awareness and teaching capabilities of the science teachers such that changes in their classroom pedagogy enhanced the academic learning environment and interest in science for EL students. The program started with a weeklong summer workshop for science teachers that taught combined content knowledge in the areas of neuroscience, substance abuse, and research methodology, infused with cultural nuanced learning skills, and modeled by using the 5E pedagogical method for instructing EL learners in science content. During the summer workshop, science teachers were matched with University-based research mentors. The role of the mentor was to engage and support the teachers and their students during the design, implementation and write up of a classroom based research project, using the neuroscience and pedagogical content area skills learned from the summer institute. At the middle of the school year, mentors were asked to complete a short survey regarding their mentoring experiences including their satisfaction with their preparation. Findings showed: (1) mentors needed to be equipped with demographic background data for the students in the 7-12 grade classrooms to better prepare themselves to work with science teachers; (2) mentors needed more information on district policy that guided classroom based research projects, (3) teachers in middle and high schools presented with limited knowledge of the research process limiting teacher capacity to bridge their science knowledge with developing original classroom research projects, (4) the most important barrier to successful mentor teacher relationships was communication, and (5) mentors that had positive mentoring relationships prior to this study were better able to communicate and support their teachers.