Adam Johnston

Educational Reform, Personal Practical Theories, and Dissatisfaction: The Anatomy of Change in College Science Teaching:

The Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model (TCSR) recognizes teaching context, teacher characteristics, teacher thinking, and their interactions as influential factors in attempts to implement classroom reform. Using the TCSR model, teachers’ personal practical theories, and conceptual change as a framework, the authors of this article studied three college science faculty members as they designed and implemented an integrated, inquiry-based science course. The documentation and analysis of context, instructors’ knowledge and beliefs, and teaching episodes allowed the authors to identify and study the interaction of factors, including grant support, that shape reform attempts. The results suggest that grant-supported mitigation of structural barriers is a necessary but insufficient precursor to change and that personal practical theories are the most powerful influence on instructional practice. The findings highlight the critical role of pedagogical and contextual dissatisfaction in creating a context for fundamental change.

Framing the Professional Development of Members of the Science Teacher Education Community

On office walls, we used to display photos and posters with the aid of yellow gummy stuff or with special squares of poster mounting tape found during raids of the office supply cabinet. The assemblage of pictures and a few clippings on the walls looked okay – for a college dormitory. More recently, we have had the need to remove items from an office wall (either for a new coat of paint or for a move to a new space), and in the process discovered that a more enduring display of materials improves the overall look of an office wall. Specifically, framing a photo from the High Sierras or the picture of a loved one not only frees us from the need for that yellow gum, but also gives a new perspective and brings a new importance to the image. The frame improves the image and sets it apart from the background wall, distinguishing it clearly from the pieces on the wall.

Preschool pathways to science: Facilitating scientific ways of thinking, talking, doing, and understanding, Rochel Gelman, Kimberly Brenneman, Gay Macdonald, Moisés Román. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company, Baltimore, MD (2010), ISBN-13: 978-1-59857-044-1 (paper), 144 pp,

Recently, Education Week highlighted the growing national interest in preschool science education (Viadero, 2010, January 20). The story leaves the impression that educating preschoolers in science is poised to become a national movement. Science education for preschoolers is supported in policy by a recent National Research Council (2007) report advocating preschool science instruction, backed economically by National Science Foundation and Department of Education funds for creating programs and outcome assessments, and guided intellectually by new theoretical insights about the nature of knowledge and young childrens ability to acquire it. As early childhood programs are more and more being seen as vital to general social and educational reform, early science education is a potential key component. But are science education programs for preschoolers a good thing for the children and for science education in general? We ask this question as interested parties with backgrounds in the development of scientific reasoning as a developmental psychologist (EA) and in scientific understanding as a physicist and science educator (AJ). Our question is posed with specific reference to this new book by Gelman, Brenneman, Macdonald, and Román. The book offers a good springboard for the discussion as it presents a preschool science curriculum which (a) conforms to the kind of science education reform advocated by the NRC, (b) is supported by NSF and DOE funding, and (c) was developed by a team led by Rochel Gelman, a leading researcher and theorist in articulating the new theoretical view of the child on which the curriculum is based. The curriculum presented in the book has entered the broader culture as the teaching approach behind Sid the Science Kid (http://pbskids.org/sid/index. html), a popular PBS childrens show co-produced by the Jim Henson Company. In a nutshell, the Preschool Pathways to Science (PrePS) curriculum holds that children have a good deal of general knowledge of specific intellectual domains but limited detailed knowledge of those domains. For example, although they readily distinguish between animate and inanimate objects, they may not understand what distinguishes them inside and out. Childrens knowledge is leveraged by a PrePS teacher who guides the children through a socially based scientific inquiry process that fills out their domain knowledge and promotes skills relevant to the “scientist-in-waiting.” The term scientist-in-waiting expresses the recognition that pre-

29.95

Research has become a point of much greater emphasis in the undergraduate science curriculum within the past few generations of undergraduate students. However, there is not universal agreement upon what constitutes a successful undergraduate research program, and how degrees of success should be measured. A model for a successful program based principally on student ownership of research projects will be presented here. This approach is an attempt to give undergraduate students the most holistic research experience possible, by involving them in all stages of a research project in a limited amount of time. A central goal for each student is a definable product of their particular project, which is disseminated to as wide an external audience as possible. Measures of success, from student perspectives, will be discussed. These measures include data from interviews of students before and after their research experience.

What Constitutes Successful Undergraduate Research

This book demonstrates that long-term experimentation and monitoring are vitally important in understanding changes that are occurring in the ecosystems. Chapters are based on papers presented at a conference held in July 1993 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rothamsted Experimental Station. During these 150 years of agricultural research a unique resource that is relevant to sustainability, environmental impact and climate change. The book consists of 22 chapters and covers a wide range of topics, including descritions of various long-term experiments in the USA, Australia, Eastern Europe and Africa, as well as the studies at Rothamsted. It also includes chapters on long-term studies of climate-vegetation relationships, tropical forest dynamics, bird populations and planktonic communities as monitors of marine environmental change. As a result it will interest a very wide range of readers in agronomy, soil science, forestry, ecology and environmental science.