Development of Professional Learning Communities: Factors within the NSF GK-12 Program

This paper focuses on the process and activities supporting professional development for scientist-fellows and teachers in high school classroom environs.?? The GK-12 Program at UIUC has made it its goal to create a professional learning community where the fellows experience teaching roles from high school mentor/teacher experts; a teaming that often produces a?? shared vision of comprehensive, coherent, and integrated approaches to professional development and life-long learning.?? In turn, the teachers themselves mature, developing enhanced content mastery and team-work skills. Our efforts reflect a systematic effort to develop strategies to remedy the present disconnect between teacher preparation and teaching practice by addressing critical issues and needs surrounding preparation, enhancement, and retention of science, technology, and mathematics (STM) teachers for grades K-12.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe