HR: 0800h
AN: ED21C-0078    [Abstracts]
TI: Teachers engaging in Authentic Education Research as They Engage Students in Authentic Science Research: A Collaboration Among Scientists, Education Researchers and Practitioners
AU: * Schielack, J F
EM: janie@its.tamu.edu
AF: Information Technology in Science (ITS) Center for Teaching and Learning, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3257 United States
AU: Herbert, B E
EM: herbert@geo.tamu.edu
AF: Geology & Geophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3115 United States
AB: The ITS Center for Teaching and Learning (http://its.tamu.edu) is a five-year NSF-funded collaborative effort to engage scientists, educational researchers, and educators in the use of information technology to enhance science teaching and learning at Grades 7 - 16. The ITS program combines graduate courses in science and science education leadership for both science and education graduate students with professional development experiences for classroom teachers. The design of the ITS professional development experience is based upon the assumption that science and mathematics teaching and learning will be improved when they become more connected to the authentic science research done in field settings or laboratories. The effective use of information technology to support inquiry in science classrooms has been shown to help achieve this objective. In particular, the professional development for teachers centers around support for implementing educational research in their own classrooms on the impacts of using information technology to promote authentic science experiences for their students. As a design study that is "working toward a greater understanding of the "learning ecology," the research related to the creation and refinement of the ITS Center's collaborative environment for integrating professional development for faculty, graduate students, and classroom teachers is contributing information about an important setting not often included in the descriptions of professional development, a setting that incorporates distributed expertise and resulting distributed growth in the various categories of participants: scientists, science graduate students, education researchers, science education graduate students, and master teachers. Design-based research is an emerging paradigm for the study of learning in context through the systematic design and study of instructional strategies and tools. In this presentation, we will discuss the results of the formative evaluation process that has moved the ITS Center's collaborative environment for professional development through the iterative process from Phase I (the planned program designed in-house) to Phase II (the experimental program being tested in-house). Phase II highlighted learning experiences over two summers focused on the exploration of environmentally-related science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) topics through the use of modeling, visualization and complex data sets to explore authentic scientific questions that can be integrated within the 7-16 curriculum.
UR: http://its.tamu.edu
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
DE: 0830 Teacher training
DE: 0840 Evaluation and assessment
SC: Education and Human Resourcese [ED]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting