Teacher Institute: Our Impact

Click on the markers on the map to see school names and a sampling of teacher testimonials. Use your mouse to zoom in and out on the map.

Since 2012, a team of researchers from SRI International’s Center for Technology in Learning has served as developmental evaluators to the TISS program, studying teacher experiences in the program and their subsequent impacts on science teaching identity, confidence, competence, reflection, and collaboration. What follows is a summary of findings on TISS’s impacts on its teacher participants.

Maxwell Elementary School began participating in TISS in 2011, with a small group of teachers in Cohort 3, and has sent teachers to TISS in each subsequent year through Cohort 6. During the 2015-2016 school year, SRI International conducted interviews with the teachers at Maxwell to better understand individual growth by TISS participants, in addition to collective change at the school. (Please note – “Maxwell Elementary” is a pseudonym to protect the anonymity of the actual school studied.)

In 2010, Posey Elementary School began sending teachers to participate in TISS. Since then, four pairs of teachers have completed the two-year program, each in separate cohorts. This case study aims to parse out the impacts TISS has had on Posey, both its teacher participants and the school as a whole. (Please note – “Posey Elementary” is a pseudonym to protect the anonymity of the actual school studied.)

From 2013-2015, the Academy's Teacher Institute partnered with Stanford's SCALE program and SRI International to complete a Discovery Research K-12 project sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

*These estimates are based on the following assumptions, grounded in an external evaluation completed by Rockman et al in 2014:

• 35% of TISS teachers teach K-3rd grade and 65% teach 4th-7th grade
• K-3rd class size averages 20 students
• 4th-7th class size averages 34 students

Additionally, the estimates assume:

• Most teachers have continued to teach in their grade band since participating in the program
• Attrition from teaching is equal to or less than 2 teachers per cohort per year