Creativity and the urban STEM teacher

by | Thursday, November 29, 2018

I have written previously about the MSUrbanSTEM project and what it has meant to me. Over the past couple of years we have also published about this line of work (most prominently in a special issue of The Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching). Another book chapter (this one focusing on creativity in urban educational contexts) was recently published. Citation, link to article and abstract below.

Horton A., Henriksen D., Mishra P., Seals C., Shack K., Marcotte C. (2019), Creativity and the Urban Teacher: A STEM-Related Professional Development Program. In: Mullen C. (eds) Creativity Under Duress in Education? Creativity Theory and Action in Education, vol 3. Springer DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90272-2_16

Abstract: We examine the urban context of learning for the fellows in a partnership between Michigan State University (MSU) and Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting and business services company, which resulted in the Wipro Urban STEM Fellowship Program at Michigan State University (MSUrbanSTEM) program. This grant-funded fellowship provided full tuition scholarships and stipends for 124 highly motivated teachers in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) who demonstrated a passion for teaching STEM. The fellows were divided up into three cohorts. Each cohort participated in an innovative yearlong integrated learning experience to build STEM teachers’ capacity to lead and inspire transformative, innovative practices in urban K-12 schools. In this chapter, the fellows’ instructors explore how to support these teacher participants in their efforts to foster creativity in an era of intensified authority, control, and resistance. By engaging in creative pedagogies explicitly connected to disciplinary knowledge, the program aims to disrupt traditional ideologies around teaching. The mission of the MSUrbanSTEM program is to empower K-12 math and science teachers in CPS to create transformative, innovative, and multimodal instructional experiences through project-based and experiential learning experiences. Each educator participant was encouraged to engage in inquiry around how the ideas of wonder, improvisation, invention, and reflection connected with his or her subject-matter expertise. As reported by way of this case example of teacher creativity, these strategies supported the activities the teachers engaged in throughout the year. The fellowship itself provided a foundation for fellows to develop projects for reshaping aspects of their teaching practice.

Photo & image design by @punyamishra

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Personality analysis of my blog

As you know I am always intrigued by a new breed to personality analysis tools that are out there in the world (for instance see these prior postings: on PersonalDNA; on Color IQ; and browsing for gender). So here is this new website that seeks to analyze me by...

Modeling human behavior: The new dark art of silicon sampling

Modeling human behavior: The new dark art of silicon sampling

A couple of months ago I had written this post, On merging with our technologies – which was essentially quotes from a conversation Ezra Klein had with the novelist Mohsin Hamid. I finished the post with a quote speaking the dangers of predictive technologies on human...

Exploring visual space with mathematics

Stacy Clause just sent me this very cool link to an article titled Exploring logo designs with Mathematica. In this article, Chris Carlson, of the User Design Group at Mathematia shows how one can mathematically develop variations on commercial logo designs by the...

EduSummIT 2017: An update

EduSummIT 2017: An update

I just returned from participating in EDUsummIT 2017, the fifth International Summit on Information Technology in Education. EDUsummIT is a global knowledge building community of researchers, educational practitioners, and policy makers committed to...

Harold Pinter, RIP

One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness — Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008).

What is the value of a theoretical framework?

One question that all doctoral students dread (and rightfully so) is "What is your theoretical framework?" Why, they wonder (silently), why do we need a framework? This question popped up recently in, of all places, Facebook. Pilar Quezzaire, a graduate of our MAET...

Post-lunch session: Geetha Narayanan

Geetha Narayanan, Director Mallya Aditi International School and Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, is someone I have wanted to meet for a long time. One of the pleasures of of this conference is getting an opportunity to hear her speak ... and I was not...

Finding Nemo, the sea-quel

Our family's stop-motion animation festival continues with our latest offering: Finding Nemo, the sea-quel!!  This movie was conceptualized by Shreya and filmed by all of us over a couple of days. What was interesting about this movie was just how many...

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *