Aerospace Education Services Project (AESP)

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Aerospace Education Services Project (AESP)

• William S. Carlsen, Director (wcarlsen_at_psu.edu)
• Pennsylvania State University

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AESP

• A five-year cooperative agreement between Penn
  State University and NASA, through Langley
  Research Center.
• AESP provides educational services to K-12
  schools and other educational entities. Its 18
  Education Specialists, who are based at NASA
  centers, deliver teacher professional development
  and other educational programming in all 50
  states and U.S. territories.
• In 2008, six new Traveling Education Specialists
  will be added to the AESP workforce.

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Project Goals

• Work closely with higher education.
• Change the emphasis of school visits.
• Work early with new NASA projects.
• Give priority to the needs of schools.  
• Facilitate collaborations between K-12 schools
  and scientists and engineers.
• Use technologies effectively.
• Support differentiated training and activity of
  education specialists and other staff.
• Help prepare NASAs future workforce.

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Enrollment Targets
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Elaboration on Select Goals

• Higher education Strengthen preservice and
  inservice teacher education at colleges and
  universities where NASA RD is conducted and
  where interactions can be sustained among
  scientists, science educators, and teachers.
• School visits Shift the focus from one-time
  visits and school assemblies to efforts that
  strengthen university-based professional
  development build capacity and provide
  opportunities for teachers to practice new
  pedagogical approaches.
• New NASA projects Where desired, assist in
  planning K-12 components, to contribute a
  ground-truth perspective on the actual needs of
  teachers, state curriculum standards, and
  mechanisms for training and dissemination.

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Elaboration on Select Goals

• Collaborations with Other Stakeholders Support
  collaborations that leverage other university,
  industry, and government outreach to K-12
  education.
• NASAs future workforce Identify and address
  strategic holes in NASAs educational enterprise
  at the K-12 level. For example, promote and
  support initiatives like the cross-cultural
  opportunities in the new GLOBE IESSPs.

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AESP SharePoint Services
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http//csats.psu.edu
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National Space Grant Foundation

• Support development of credit-bearing preservice
  and inservice science courses for teachers in all
  50 states and territories, by working in
  collaboration with Space Grant affiliated
  colleges and universities. Partnerships at the
  state level provide a mechanism for
  state-specific modifications in programming.
• Financial support for state-by-state modification
  of courses by Space Grant-affiliated colleges and
  universities.
• Through mini-grants administered by the NSGF
  (300,000/yr), subsidize courses offered at Space
  Grant Consortium institutions during the first
  year or two that they are offered.
• Work closely with state Space Grant directors to
  develop strategies for building and sustaining
  university/NASA/school collaborations and build
  state-specific endowments for NASA education that
  can be used to sustain collaborations.

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Ed Specialists Space Grants

• Education Specialists based at NASA Centers can
  assist in developing state-specific PD courses,
  and will offer interstitial workshops and school
  visits, recruit new participants, observe and
  coach teachers, build support from school
  administrators and parents, and leverage
  resources from other outreach programs.
• Specialists will work with Space Grant Consortium
  institutions to market courses and to provide the
  ongoing school-based support and evaluation data
  that Space Grant partners will need to help them
  sustain their efforts.
• Specialists will be able to help ensure that PD
  plans emphasize student scientific inquiry,
  growth in student and teacher subject matter
  knowledge, and building local and regional
  capacityall elements of effective professional
  development.

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Program Development Cycle
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Template Sandbox

• Solicitations for sandbox course development will
  be developed in collaboration with LaRC, which
  will work with NASA to ensure that the focus of
  new content is consistent with NASAs strategic
  direction.
• Create a small number of course templates by
  engaging NASA-funded scientists, education
  scholars, Educational Specialists, and teachers.
• Product will be one or more course templates and
  a toolkit of new and pre-existing instructional
  materials that could be used to expand the
  template into future PD curricula.
• Clearly articulate the conceptual progression in
  the templates (evident to educators), and select
  instructional activities to model and enhance
  inquiry-based instruction, not to keep students
  busy.

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Curricular Prototypes, Field Testing, and
Programmatic Integration

• Prototype courses will be developed annually
• Focus on preservice teachers, inservice teachers,
  or both and attentive to the different needs of
  elementary and secondary teachers (and students)
• At least 30 hours of classroom instruction, plus
  other structured work, and offered for graduate
  credit through an accredited college or
  university, typically a Space Grant Consortium
  institution.
• Ensure that the programs are long enough in
  duration to effect measurable changes in
  teachers knowledge and will also make it much
  more likely that the resulting courses will both
  address teachers needs and can be sustained
  through a tuition model.

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National Dissemination and Evaluation

• Awards for course offerings will be made annually
  on the basis of merit and will be administered by
  the NSGF.
• Network of state-specific courses offered
  annually to inservice and preservice teachers
• e.g., Week-long courses in successive years with
  an intervening period of school-year workshops,
  ePD, and other participation
• Professional development that is both routine
  and site-sensitive
• The primary purpose of evaluation will be not to
  rate the workshop/lesson/curriculum, but to
  gauge its educational effects

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Proposed Initial Course Template/Prototype Themes

• Summer 2008 Mars
• Summer 2009 The Moon

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Possible Scenario

• A group of New Hampshire science, engineering,
  and education faculty apply for and receive a
  minigrant to offer a credit-bearing course on
  Mars-related science to NH teachers in summer,
  2009.
• AESP specialists and other experts assist in
  acquiring and modifying instructional resources,
  recruiting teachers, getting commitments from
  schools, etc.
• The graduate course is offered to teachers.
  Support for instruction and tuition subsidies are
  provided through the NSGF award.
• During the following school year, AESP
  specialists visit participating teachers schools
  and provide classroom support, observe classes,
  collect evaluation data, etc. In addition, a
  fleet of traveling specialists spends two weeks
  in NH delivering programs high production value
  programs in participating schools.

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Opportunities for Space Grant Consortia

• Technical and financial assistance in developing
  high-quality, sustainable professional
  development opportunities for teachers in
  NASA-related content.
• A mechanism for recruiting teacher participants
  and systematically collecting meaningful outcome
  data Measures of teacher and student learning,
  changes in instructional practice, recruitment
  into STEM higher education, etc.
• New routes for faculty who conduct sponsored
  research to offer manageable, effective EPO to
  teachers.
• Significant school-year follow-up and subsequent,
  relevant school programming.

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Bill Carlsen (wcarlsen_at_psu.edu), cell (814)
933-2899Tom Taylor (ttaylor_at_psu.edu), AD for
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