N-PASS

NPASS2 Funded

NPASS2 [Taking NPASS to Scale] has been funded for three year to provide professional development for out-of-school time (OST) science trainers, administrators, and frontline staff serving youth from traditionally underserved and economically challenged groups in eight US states (CA, GA, MD, MN, MO, NH, NJ, OH.)

Deliverables include three-day, semi-annual train-the-trainer institutes in each state to prepare a new cadre of “Science Trainers” who can provide long term training and support to afterschool sites. The new Science Trainers will identify 5 - 10 OST sites to attend a series of half-day science trainings over a period of at least a year. Each session will introduce a new extended science project, initially from the Explore-It and Design-It series, to be implemented over a period of weeks in an afterschool setting. OST sites receive a materials kit and guide for the activities at each training session and occasional site visits from their trainer. Each year, 30 OST state leaders, 100 science trainers and over 500 youth workers will be reached at 750 community sites serving 22,000 youth.

The project evaluation to be conducted by the Goodman Research Group (GRG) employs a longitudinal design to determine participants' growth over time and the magnitude of change among the variables. The formative evaluation is designed to assess the development of the project's deliverables while the summative evaluation examines the OST science trainers, OST state network administrators, youth workers, and site administrators through a baseline survey, in addition to annual questionnaires and interviews of network administrators and OST site administrators.

NPASS in 2009

During 2009 Charlie Hutchison will be leading NPASS trainings and participating in other informal Science PD events as follows

N-PASS Project Overview

Download a text version of this overview
The Center for Science Education at Education Development Center, Inc, in Newton, MA (EDC) and the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, CA (LHS) are leading a national initiative to promote a model for long term professional development for after school program providers to help community based organizations (CBO’s) implement high quality, hands-on science and engineering projects with their children.

Staff at EDC and LHS are responsible for the overall management of the program, as well as providing annual training institutes for all trainers and mentors. EDC, LHS are also developing guidebooks and other resources that will help professional developers everywhere train afterschool staff to do these (and similar) science projects with children.

Taking our cue from research in formal education, which indicates that occasional or one-shot training has little impact on the way teachers present science material to their students, N-PASS focuses on long term training and support of afterschool agencies in order to ensure a lasting impact on the way these institutions contribute to the science education of the children they serve. Science Museum and 4-H affiliated professional trainers from across the country have begun offering monthly training sessions and regular follow-up support to a committed cadre of community based organizations (CBO’s) in their regions, preparing them to facilitate open-ended and guided explorations of science and engineering topics with children.