While I know you can read about the publications, presentations and grants in the Annual Productivity Report there are a few things I want to highlight.
Bill Straits and his colleague Sharon Nichols of the University of Alabama were the recipients of the Association for Science Teacher Education's Innovations in Teaching Science award. The Innovations in Teaching Science award "seeks to encourage the development and dissemination of new designs for courses and curricula, new instructional methods or approaches, and other types of innovations in the pre- or in-service education of teachers of science."
Bill and Shari's article, Using historical non-fiction and literature circles to develop elementary teachers' nature of science understandings, will be published in the Journal of Science Teacher Education. Congratulations to Bill on this award!
Bill Ritz has been running summer workshops for pre-K teachers for the past decade. He's spent a large portion of his life and energy on bringing science to the youngest learners. His recently published book, A Head Start on Science, has been a big seller for NSTA Press and it may be translated into Chinese! Bill will be going to China this November to meet with educational leaders so that he can bring his program to them. We are so excited for Bill and know that the pre-K students in China may soon enjoy exploring A Sense of Wonder Science. Bill will also be writing a regular column for the National Head Start Association, Children and Families.
Susan Gomez-Zwiep and Bill Straits are principal investigators on a million dollar grant from the California Post Secondary Education Council. Their project addresses K-2 science teaching and learning. This audience is largely forgotten in the realm of professional development as science testing doesn't take place at that level and the emphasis has been on reading and mathematics for so long. This three year project will have Susan, Bill and others working with Garvey and Montebello School Districts. They'll do summer workshops as well as year-long professional development activities. Congratulations to Susan and Bill!
Jim Kisiel has been selected to serve on a CSU advisory board to examine how informal science education can be more formally linked with CSU teacher preparation and teacher inservice activities. Funded by the Chancellor's Office and Boeing Corporation, Jim will be working with other CSU science education colleagues to develop a pilot study and needs assessment. This project fits in well with other professional activities which Jim does. He has funds from the Oregon Sea Grant to work with four different aquariums to more clearly understand how people use touch tanks and which factor are most influential in shaping the learning experiences people have with touch tanks and live animal exhibits.
Al Colburn will have a regular monthly column in The Science Teacher. His column, The Prepared Practitioner, will help bridge the gap between educational research and practice while also serving as a refresher on pedagogy.
Laura Henriques is a co-PI on an NSF grant to help develop an electronic teaching commons. She and others have been developing a Science Education Portal in MERLOT. This will be one of the starting points for the grant, Building Locally, Linking Globally: Networking Micro-Communities of New Science and Math Teachers Using the NSDL to Advance Instructional Excellence in High Need Schools. In addition to the portal on MERLOT there will be linkages to the various Noyce Scholars programs throughout the state.
