Factors Influencing the Efficacy of Internships for the Professional Development of Teachers in Science

Integrated Science Education Outreach (InSciEd Out) is a collaboration formed between Mayo Clinic, Winona State University, and Rochester Public Schools (MN) with the shared vision of achieving excellence in science education. Teams of teachers from all disciplines within a single school experience cutting-edge science using the zebrafish model system, as well as current pedagogical methods during a 96-hour summer internship over 12 days at Mayo Clinic. The internship has gone through several permutations in the last 3 years with regard to total length, depth of teams, and total percentage of teachers within a school. An online survey tool was used to track a number of teacher outcomes including comfort in the classroom with science and availability of resources. In this work, we analyzed surveys completed before each teaching team started their internship and again after they had run new curriculum developed during the internship with their own students. The best model for growth in teacher comfort and visibility of available resources was potentially the most work-intensive. In this version, we had all classroom teachers and most of the support staff attend the internship. The school that was used for that model has subsequently provided teachers opportunities for additional internships with the InSciEd Out team focusing on cultural relevance and alignment of their work across grade levels. This analysis has provided us with growth and improvement in the process of partnering with new schools. Further, we are working to describe the potential presence of a "bystander effect," the shift in comfort with science of teachers who did not attend our internship, but work closely with those who did.