January 2009

Hot off the Presses
Making Science Curriculum Matter: Wisdom for the Reform Road Ahead
This practitioner-friendly book brings together the curriculum implementation and dissemination experience and expertise of EDC’s K–12 Science Curriculum Dissemination Center; the IMPACT Center at the Center for the Enhancement of Science at Northeastern University in Boston; the K–8 Leadership and Assistance for Science Education reform centers, based at the National Science Resource Centers in Washington, D.C.; and the Science Curriculum Implementation Center at BSCS in Colorado Springs. It describes curriculum-centered science education reform experiences that should prove useful to people in school districts or state education departments who make decisions about curriculum, instruction, professional development, or assessment or who serve on textbook selection committees. The book also has value for college and university science, science education, and curriculum faculty; leaders of science education initiatives within the professional science community; and business and community leaders.

Read more
http://cse.edc.org/products/ProductView.asp?PID=1855

Order a copy
http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book232185

Assessing Science Learning: Perspectives from Research and Practice
CSE’s Marian Pasquale and Marian Grogan contributed a chapter to this NSTA publication. The CSE-authored chapter, entitled "Aligning Classroom-Based Assessment with High-Stakes Tests," grows out of previous in-person professional development and capacity building with science teachers across the country, as well as an online course on assessment.

Read more
http://cse.edc.org/products/ProductView.asp?PID=1868

Order a copy
http://www.nsta.org/store/product_detail.aspx?id=10.2505/9781933531403

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Where Are We Now?
CSE Welcomes Staff
CSE is pleased to welcome Fred Bunduki, Jackie DeLisi, and Tzur Karelitz. Fred is our new fiscal manager, and Jackie and Tzur have joined our research team.

Learn more about Fred
http://cse.edc.org/aboutus/StaffView.asp?SID=48

Learn more about Jackie
http://cse.edc.org/aboutus/StaffView.asp?SID=47

Learn more about Tzur
http://cse.edc.org/aboutus/StaffView.asp?SID=46

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Support to Science Educators

• Since November of 2007, CSE staff members Karen Worth and Jeff Winokur have been working on a magnet schools project in Lorain, OH, in collaboration with EDC’s Education, Employment, and Community Programs (EEC). The Garfield Elementary School has been designated as a science magnet school, and Karen and Jeff are working with this school to define what that means. Jeff presented a workshop introducing inquiry science to school staff in November of 2007, and Karen and Jeff worked with the Garfield Science Team here at EDC this past summer. During this school year, Jeff plans to visit the school for several days, and work with the science team at NSTA in March and again here at EDC this summer.
• Jeff is also working with a group of elementary science teacher leaders in Connecticut through LEARN, one of Connecticut’s Regional Educational Service Centers (RESC), which serves 24 school districts in southeastern/shoreline Connecticut. He will facilitate half of the sessions of a yearlong course to help participants work with colleagues on connecting science and literacy through the use of discussion and notebooks.

CSE staff member Marian Pasquale has been involved with the following:

• Portland (Oregon) Public Schools
  Marian continues to work with the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools, providing technical assistance to the PPS’s K–12 Science Teachers on Special Assignment (TOSA’s). She has helped to design the K–8 science curriculum framework—a middle-grades assessment tool that is a compilation of science assessments contributed by teachers. These assessments are aligned with the middle-grades science framework and can be used by all middle-grades teachers with their curriculum units.
  The recent focus of this work has been to conduct workshops on inquiry-based teaching with middle-grades science teachers and to help adapt the book Making Science Mentors: A 10-Session Guide for Middle Grades (NSTA Press) to fit the PPS professional development schedule.

• Massachusetts State Science and Engineering Fair
  Marian has been working with the Massachusetts State Science and Engineering Fair to develop an inquiry institute for secondary science teachers (grades 6–12). This six-day institute was piloted in July with 20 secondary science teachers from across the state. The institute, Teaching Science through the Inquiry Process (TSIP), is part of MSSEF’s Curious Minds Initiative. Training will be held early this summer for teachers interested in becoming institute facilitators. Two more TSIP institutes will be held this summer. For further details as they become available, see http://massscifair.org/.

• Danvers and Fall River Public Schools
  Marian works with several school districts in Massachusetts on inquiry teaching and curriculum selection. In the spring of 2008, she worked with teachers at the Holten Richmond Middle School in Danvers to help them select new science curriculum materials, and in the summer of 2008, CSE conducted a three-day inquiry workshop for science teachers at the Kuss Middle School in Fall River.

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PIs Convene to Discuss Transforming STEM Education
Approximately 350 NSF grantees and guests gathered on November 12–14 in Washington, D.C., for the 2008 DR-K12 PI Meeting. CSE organized the meeting to disseminate and build knowledge about STEM education research and support to the DR-K12 community. The theme was Transforming STEM Education Through Research: Making an Impact on Student and Teacher Learning.

Joan Ferrini-Mundy opened the meeting with a presentation on Transforming STEM Education Through Research, followed by a response from PI David Rose. Agenda highlights included presentations on cyberlearning, research design and methodology, evaluation, student and teacher learning, curriculum and assessment, and STEM education research reporting and legislation. Concurrent sessions featured PI presentations about issues and findings of their work. In addition, special sessions were held for a group of Beginning Researchers and Developers.

Read more, including the agenda, session presentations, and related resources, to learn more about what this group of distinguished researchers are working on and discussing
http://cse.edc.org/dr-k12/MeetingAgenda.aspx

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CSE Houses NSF’s DR-K12 Learning Resource Network
CSE recently established NSF’s Discovery Research K–12 Learning Resource Network. Over a five-year period, the Network will (1) gather information about DR-K12 projects; (2) conduct thematic research and produce syntheses of findings of DR-K12 project work; (3) provide opportunities for professional growth in research, development, and evaluation methods; and (4) assist with the dissemination and scale-up of the results of DR-K12 projects both within the program and with national research, practice, and policy communities.

Network partners are Abt Associates and Policy Studies Associates. EDC will support grantees through a range of virtual and in-person opportunities, communities of practice, consultation services, and thematic meetings on substantive, methodological, and implementation issues. UMass Donahue Institute will evaluate the Network.

For more information, contact Catherine McCulloch, project director.

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CSE Provides Guidance to State STEM Initiatives

• The Advisory Councils to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education are charged with advising the commissioner and the Board on matters related to the implementation of education reform in the Commonwealth and to provide recommendations to accomplish goals set by the Board and the Department of Education to meet federal and state requirements. There are 17 advisory councils. CSE's Jackie Miller is serving on the one on Mathematics and Science Education.
• In the summer of 2008, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, acting on behalf of the Goddard Council, a legislative commission focused on the STEM pipeline, contracted with CSE to conduct a study to identify important strategies and actions the Council might employ to move forward on a STEM improvement agenda. The study team, Barbara Brauner Berns, Judith Opert Sandler, Nancy Richardson, and Lisa Marco, interviewed Massachusetts practitioners, education leaders, and legislators, and reviewed STEM initiatives across the country. On the basis of this information, their report provides recommendations for consideration by the Council. Barbara presented preliminary findings at the policy strand of the 2008 STEM Summit on October, 28.

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A Focus on CSE Research and Evaluation
Overview of Our Portfolio of Work
The research and evaluation work of CSE has grown by leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, and we wanted to share with you some highlights from this exciting portfolio of work. Our research work is focused on three main themes: pedagogical practices in K–16 classrooms, teacher workforce issues, and institutional change and sustainability. Additionally, we provide external evaluation services to grantees that develop ecology curriculum and professional development programs. Our internal evaluation services focus on developing student-assessment and teacher-feedback mechanisms for curriculum projects. Our current portfolio includes 13 external evaluations, 2 internal evaluations, 10 research projects, and 1 research/methodological support project.

You can read more about all of these projects on our Web site at http://cse.edc.org/

Our team comprises 11 researchers with a range of experience from 3 years, in the case of some junior staff, to nearly 30 for some of the senior research scientists. We bring a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds to our work, which in some cases is informed from past teaching experience in either K–12 or higher education, and for others is shaped by conducting research and evaluation in other discipline areas such as cognitive psychology and human development. Our staff has strong skills in both quantitative to qualitative methodologies to meet the challenges of the array of projects in which we are engaged.

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Recent Products
Findings from our research projects appear in many dissemination venues. Some recent examples are:

• Webinar—CSE researchers Abigail Jurist Levy, Pamela Ellis, Marian Grogan, and Kevon Tucker-Seeley co-authored the Compendium of Strategies to Reduce Teacher Turnover, which was presented in a webinar on Thursday, December 4, 2008, called Exploring Teacher Retention Strategies and the Distribution of Highly Qualified Teachers. Abigail Jurist Levy, in collaboration with study authors Sarah Guckenburg and Susan Mundry, who authored a report on the distribution of highly qualified teachers in New York, presented their findings to a group of approximately 55 attendees from across the country and across a range of perspectives. During the webinar, attendees discussed these issues and how they were affecting their jurisdictions.

Read more about the report
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=169&productID=121

• Boston Science Partnership (BSP)—The BSP research team, Abigail Jurist Levy, Tzur Karelitz, Phitsamay Uy, Erica Fields, and Audrey Martinez-Gudapakkam, presented their most recent findings to the partnership’s leadership group, including Boston Public School, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Northeastern University leaders. This work focused on the relationship between teachers’ qualifications and their teaching assignments, the frequency with which their teaching assignments shift from one year to the next, and teachers’ efforts to advance their effectiveness in the classroom in this fluid context. The team also presented their findings at this month’s MSP Learning Network Conference.

• CSE authors Abigail Jurist Levy, Marian Pasquale, and Lisa Marco’s article, Models of Providing Science Instruction in the Elementary Grades: A Research Agenda to Inform Decision Makers was published in the Fall 2008 issue of Science Educator. This article was one outgrowth of the invitational conference on science specialists that CSE hosted in November 2007, with support from the National Science Foundation.
  
  Read the article
  http://cse.edc.org/news/pdfs/ScienceEducator_Fall2008.pdf

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New Field Test for ISIOP
We would like to announce a recent grant from NSF to field-test the final version of the Inquiry Science Instruction Observation Protocol (ISIOP) with collaborating teams of evaluators. This new grant will support further testing of the protocol to ensure that it will work well with the intended user group—evaluators of science instruction. There will be some overlap between the current development project and this new grant to ensure continuity to the development work. Though many of our colleagues have contacted us about using the protocol, we have not completed the pilot testing of the instrument and thus do not have a version to share just yet.

However, if you would like to know more about either project, please visit our descriptions at http://cse.edc.org/researchEval/researchProjects.asp, where you will find the contact information for Daphne Minner, the principal investigator, for updates on this work as it progresses.

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Research Gets Top Billing
Read the article in the 2007 EDC Annual Report about the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI), featuring CSE's Abigail Jurist Levy.
http://cse.edc.org/news/pdfs/ResearchGetsTopBilling_EDCAnnualReport_2007.pdf

Coming Soon
Reforming Secondary Science Instruction
CSE's Jacqueline S. Miller and Ruth Krumhansl contributed a chapter to this NSTA publication which is due out next month. The chapter is entitled "Intended curriculum, enacted curriculum: Learning from innovative instructional materials and making them your own."

Order a copy
http://www.nsta.org/store/product_detail.aspx?id=10.2505/9781935155034

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Mark Your Calendar for the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) National Conference in New Orleans, March 19–22, 2009
CSE has many sessions planned for conference participants.

Wednesday, March 18

• Professional Development Institute: Discussion and Writing in the Inquiry-Based Elementary Science Classroom: Critical Partners in the Development of Scientific Reasoning and Conceptual Understanding
  8:30 am–4:00 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 335
  Presenters: Karen Worth, Sally Crissman, Jeff Winokur; Martha Heller-Winokur (Tufts University)
• Professional Development Institute: Inquiry-based Mentoring
  8:00 am–3:00 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 336
  Presenters: Marian M. Pasquale, Catherine McCulloch

Thursday, March 19

• EDC Pathway: Connecting Science and Literacy: The Role of Explicit Teaching
  11:00 am–1:00 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 335
  Presenters: Karen Worth, Sally Crissman, Jeff Winokur; Martha Heller-Winokur (Tufts University)
• EDC Pathway: Focusing Observations: Inquiry Criteria for Middle Grades Science Classroom Visits
  4:00–6:00 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 336
  Presenters: Marian M. Pasquale, Bernie Zubrowski
• EDC Pathway: Facilitating the Work of Science Mentors
  1:30–3:30 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 336
  Presenters: Catherine McCulloch, Marian M. Pasquale
• Exploratorium Pathway: A Developmental Approach to Extended Guided Inquiry
  8:00–11:00 am Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 349
  Presenter: Bernie Zubrowski
• Exploratorium Pathway: The Young Scientist: Engaging Three- to Five-Year-Old Children in Science Inquiry
  11:30 am–1:30 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 349
  Presenters: Jeff Winokur, Karen Worth
• Detecting, Diagnosing, and Coping with Students' Chemistry and Physics Misconceptions
  8:00–9:00 am Sheraton New Orleans, Salon 817 & 821
  Presenter: Bettina Dembek
• When Google Doesn't Know: How to Make Your Colleagues Your Greatest Resource!
  12:30–1:30 pm Sheraton New Orleans, Napoleon B3
  Presenter: Bettina Dembek

Friday, March 20

• EDC Pathway: Writing in Science Using Firsthand Data
  2:00–4:00 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 335
  Presenters: Karen Worth, Sally Crissman, Jeff Winokur; Martha Heller-Winokur (Tufts University)
• EDC Pathway: The Art of Talk and the Power of the Circle
  8:00–10:00 am Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 335
  Presenters: Karen Worth, Sally Crissman, Jeff Winokur; Martha Heller-Winokur (Tufts University)
• Make Scientific Thinking Happen in the High School Classroom
  2:00–3:00 pm Sheraton New Orleans, Edgewood A/B
  Presenter: Bettina Dembek
• How to Get the Most Out of Mentoring: For New Teachers
  3:30–4:30 pm New Orleans Marriott, Jackson
  Presenters: Marian M. Pasquale, Catherine McCulloch, John Hodsdon
• Getting Kids Invested with Stories: Copper and the Statue of Liberty
  5:00–6:00 pm Sheraton New Orleans, Gallier A/B
  Presenters: Charles J. Hill, Deborah A. Pusateri

Saturday, March 21

• Breakout Sessions at the Research Dissemination Conference Science Assessment, Linking Science and Literacy, and Science and English Language Learners: What Does Current Research Say About Best Practices?
  7:00 am–3:30 pm Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
  

Aligning Classroom-Based Assessment with High Stakes Tests
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 335
Presenter: Marian M. Pasquale

Talk in the Science Classroom
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 341
Presenters: Karen Worth, Sally Crissman, Jeff Winokur; Martha Heller-Winokur (Tufts University)

• Short Course: The Young Scientist: Engaging Three- to Five-Year-Old Children in Science Inquiry
  Presenters: Jeff Winokur, Karen Worth
• Have Einstein, Curie, and Newton Visit Your Classroom: Embedding the History of Science into Your Teaching
  11:00 am–12:00 pm Sheraton New Orleans, Napoleon B2
  Presenter: Christine V. Brown
• Strategies, Tools, and Tips from a Mentor
  11:00 am–12:00 pm J.W. Marriott New Orleans, St. Claude
  Presenters: Marian M. Pasquale, Catherine McCulloch, John Hodsdon

For further details as they become available, see http://cse.edc.org/news/2009Conferences.asp

Watch for the next issue of CSE in Focus, which will include a focus on CSE's Science Curriculum and Assessment.

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To view other past news, visit the main News section of the CSE Web site at http://cse.edc.org/news/

SUBSCRIPTIONS: To receive CSE in Focus as well as other CSE news throughout the year, visit our Web site and become a member of our e-list: http://cse.edc.org/elist.asp. CSE in Focus is published semi-annually by Education Development Center, Inc. 55 Chapel Street, Newton, MA 02458-1060. Reproduction of this material in any way, whole or in part, is prohibited without the express written permission of EDC.

EDC’s Center for Science Education, a division of Education Development Center, Inc., is focused on improving and supporting science education, from preschool through grade 12. For more information about our work, visit http://cse.edc.org/

Copyright © 2009 Education Development Center, Inc. All rights reserved.

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