Panama GABI RET 5-Year Summative Evaluation Report

This document describes the summative project evaluation of 5 annual cohorts of STE(A)M teachers, mostly from California, Florida, and New Mexico participating in out-of-school authentic research experiences collecting fossils and learning about geology, biology, and the natural history along the Panama Canal, and their experiences with museums and research collections. The STEM content of this project is based on the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI) of animals and plants across the Isthmus of Panama over the past 5 million years. This report also describes the efficacy of sustained science-teacher partnerships, international experiences, teacher leaders and mentors, and scientist role-model visits to the teachers’ classrooms. Based on their field experiences, teachers developed lesson plans and related activities and presented their results at professional meetings. This GABI project also included a workshop in which members of fossil clubs (funded by another [AISL] project) partnered with teachers to develop lesson plans with authentic fossils donated by the fossil club members. The results of this informal-formal connection were published (Pirlo et al. 2017) in Connected Science Learning. This summative evaluation was done by TLC, Inc. , with our primary contact there being Bradford Davey.