Our Mission
The Texas State NASA STEM Educator Professional Development Collaborative is a national educator professional development system comprised of and designed to serve STEM Educators at all levels including university pre-service educators, pre-service teachers, K-12 teachers, and informal educators.
Our mission is to guide and support a broader group of educators to utilize the best of NASA’s professional learning resources. We will coordinate the delivery of these learning experiences through a highly expert staff of Texas State University Education Faculty Specialists located regionally at each of NASA’s ten Research and Space Centers.
We will also work towards developing new materials with expert faculty teams at Texas State University and partner faculty members from other universities and PD centers. We will provide professional learning experiences and resources to thousands of educators per year via four integrated delivery mechanisms of 1) NASA Face to Face (F2F) Institutes, 2) Partner-delivered Educator Professional Development (EPD), 3) Online EPD, and 4) Community-Requested EPD.
History
NASA STEM Educator Professional Development Collaborative is an innovative, comprehensive, national network system grounded in educational theory and best practices. NASA-STEM-EPDC is a transformative, diversity focused educator professional development system with a national scope led by Texas State University.
Texas State University is an experienced national leader in designing and developing research-based Educator Professional Development with a STEM focus. The College of Education’s evidence-based teacher preparation and induction practices are closely aligned with standards and recommendations put forth by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). The university is home to a diverse campus community where ethnic minorities make up 42% of the student body and 30% are Hispanic. Texas State University is recognized by the federal government as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), the largest HSI in Texas, and ranks among the top 20 universities in the nation for the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to Hispanic students. Texas State University is the largest university producer of teachers in Texas, and the second largest nationally, preparing 800 to 1000 teachers each year.
Foundational Principles
The NASA STEM EPD Collaborative will impact higher education faculty, pre-service teachers, K-12 teachers, and informal educators and is based on five innovative approaches that serve as foundational principles:
- Attention to the educator across their professional continuum
- Respect for the culture and language of the learner
- Care to leverage NASA technological innovation and assets while harnessing the expertise of teacher preparation scholars
- Boldness to explore and expand the potential of massive online learning and badging systems for educator professional learning
- Commitment to innovate a national impact evaluation model