To facilitate innovative teaching strategies aligned with COMETS, intensive professional development will be provided for informal, formal and pre-service educators. The needs of each group of educators are different as they each have potentially dramatic differences in content knowledge in ESS instruction; however, the intention of COMETS is to improve all educators’ abilities to facilitate learning science as inquiry.

Formal Educator Workshop Series. In both year 1 and year 2, a 5-day workshop with follow-up activities will be provided to formal educators involved in COMETS. Innovative teaching strategies, including learning science as inquiry, will be presented and connected to their formal curricula with hands-on inquiry project programs such as the GLOBE program. Teachers will become certified in GLOBE and challenged to implement GLOBE in their classrooms. The NASA ERC will provide training in collaboration with the WVSU Education Department. The NASA ERC will provide support for both the follow-up and on-going mentoring to ensure successful implementation of GLOBE in their classrooms.

Informal Educator Workshop Series. In both year 1 and year 2, an 8-day workshop (spread over multiple weeks) will be provided for informal educators involved in COMETS. Innovative teaching strategies, including learning science as inquiry with hands-on inquiry project programs such as the GLOBE program will be presented. Teachers will need more time than the formal educators as they will learn about the SFSC and STC/MS curriculum with materials and how it can be integrated in OST science instruction.

Professional Learning Communities. All educators will participate in professional learning communities (PLC). Throughout the program, formal, informal and pre-service teachers will be teamed to discuss the challenges and triumphs of COMETS. The PLC will consist of both weekly on-line discussions and monthly meetings between educators on the PLC team and the COMETS lead educator. We anticipate that these teachers will develop professional collegiality (Arbaugh, 2003) and that this collegiality will improve the success of COMETS. Research has shown that the PLC model is an important catalyst for enhancing teacher development and improvement (McLaughlin and Talbert, 2001).

Arbaugh, F. (2003). Study groups: professional growth through collaboration. Mathematics Teacher, 3(96), 188-191.

McLaughlin, M. W. and J. Talbert (2001). Professional communities and the work of high school teaching. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.