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Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (2007)

Chapter: Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
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Appendix B
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

Richard A. Duschl (Chair) is professor of science education at Rutgers University. Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty, he held the chair of science education at King’s College London, and prior to that was professor of science education at Vanderbilt University. One focus of his research examines how the history and philosophy of science can be applied to science education. A second focus of his research is the design of instructional sequences that promote assessment for learning. This research has led to many new ideas about how formative assessment strategies can help learners and teachers make scientific thinking visible. He also has expertise in informal science education and in earth science education. Duschl publishes widely in U.S. and international journals on inquiry, science teaching, learning, cognition, and assessment. He has served as editor of Science Education and was a member of the National Research Council (NRC) committee that wrote the Inquiry Addendum for the National Science Education Standards. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park.


Charles W. Anderson is a professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Anderson’s primary research interests are in using conceptual change and sociocultural research on student learning to improve classroom science teaching. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on this and related issues, as well as developing science teaching materials that are based on research on student learning. Anderson was coauthor of Matter and Molecules, Project 2061’s top-rated middle school science teaching materials. He served as lead consultant to the state of Michigan for the development of its state science objectives. He also led the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×

development of the life science component of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program. He is past president of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. He has been coeditor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and associate editor of Cognition and Instruction and currently serves on the editorial board of the American Educational Research Journal. He recently served as design team member for the NRC’s Committee on Test Design for K-12 Science Achievement. He has a Ph.D. in science education from the University of Texas at Austin.


Thomas B. Corcoran codirects the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has led evaluations of the Merck Institute for Science Education, the Annenberg Challenge in Philadelphia, team-based schooling in Cincinnati, and the America’s Choice Comprehensive School Design. Previously, he served as the policy advisor for education for New Jersey Governor Jim Florio, director of school improvement for research for better schools, and director of evaluation and chief-of-staff of the New Jersey Department of Education. He is a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Teaching and Learning and a member of the Research Committee of the International Baccalaureate Organization. His major research interests are the use of evidence to inform policy and practice in public education, policies for expanding access to challenging curriculum, the development and use of clinical expertise about teaching, the efficacy of different approaches to professional development, and the impact of changes in work environments on the productivity of teachers and students. He has an M.Ed. from the University of London (1963).


Kevin J. Crowley is associate professor of education and cognitive psychology at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, where he also directs the Center for Learning in Out-of-School Settings. His research interests focus on the development of children’s scientific thinking in informal, formal, and everyday settings, focusing on how they develop knowledge and skill in such contexts as museums and on the web and how to best coordinate their experiences in science. He has been a visiting fellow at the Department of Psychology and Education at Nagoya University in Japan. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University (1994).


Frank C. Keil is professor of psychology and linguistics at Yale University and master of Morse College. Previously, he held the William R. Kenan, Jr., endowed chair in psychology at Cornell University. His research focuses on how people come to make sense of the world around them. Much of this research involves asking how intuitive explanations and understandings emerge in development and how they are related to notions of cause, mecha-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×

nism, and agency. His work also explores how children and adults learn to navigate the division of cognitive labor that integrates both formal and informal scientific understanding. He received the National Institutes of Health multiyear MERIT award in 2003, which provides long-term support for outstanding investigators. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has a Ph.D. in psychology, with an emphasis in developmental psychology, from the University of Pennsylvania (1977).


David Klahr is professor in the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, where he served as department head from 1983 to 1993 and is currently director of the interdisciplinary Training Grant in Educational Research. His early work addressed cognitive processes in such diverse areas as multidimensional scaling, voting behavior, college admissions, consumer choice, peer review, and problem solving. He pioneered the application of information-processing analysis to questions of cognitive development, formulating the first computational models to account for children’s thinking processes. His current research focuses on cognitive development, scientific reasoning, and cognitively based instructional interventions in early science education. He served on the NRC Committee on Research in Education and the committee responsible for the report Knowing What Students Know. He is currently on the governing board of the Cognitive Development Society and an associate editor for Developmental Psychology. He has a Ph.D. in organizations and social behavior from Carnegie Mellon University (1968).


Okhee Lee is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Miami, Florida. Her research areas of interest include science education, language and culture, and teacher education. One of her current research projects implements instructional interventions to promote science learning and English language and literacy development for elementary school students from diverse languages and cultures. She received a 1993-1995 National Academy of Education Spencer Post-doctoral Fellowship and was a 1996-1997 fellow at the National Institute for Science Education, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She serves on editorial boards for major education research journals as well as advisory boards for science education reform projects. Lee currently serves as a member of the NRC’s Board on Science Education. Lee has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Michigan State University (1989).


Daniel M. Levin is a science teacher at Montgomery Blair High School, an ethnically diverse school in the Washington, DC, area. He taught middle school science for a number of years and is now a high school biology and chemistry teacher. He is currently on leave from the school and is acting as

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×

a professional development school coordinator for the University of Maryland while he pursues an advanced degree there. He has also held positions as a research biologist at the National Institutes of Health and at Harvard University. He has undertaken a number of professional activities in science education, including serving as research assistant in the Cognition and Technology Laboratory at the University of Maryland, writing curricula in biology, and participating in a summer institute for teachers at the National Institutes of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Research. He has a B.A. in biology and anthropology from Brandeis University and an M.A. in teaching from Towson State University, and he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in science education at the University of Maryland.


Kathleen E. Metz is associate professor of cognition and development at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests center on children’s scientific cognition, where developmental and instructional perspectives intersect. She is also interested in children’s intuitions about rudimentary statistical constructs that are involved in data-based inquiry. At the postdoctoral level, she studied cognitive development with Jean Piaget’s successor, Bärbel Inhelder, at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and she was an Alfred P. Sloan fellow in cognitive science, working with Herbert Simon at Carnegie Mellon University. Her career spans work as a classroom teacher, a curriculum developer, a teacher educator, and a cognitive science researcher. She serves on the advisory board of the National Sciences Resources Center. She served on the planning committee for the NRC workshop on Mathematical and Scientific Development in Early Childhood. She has an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts in human development and teacher education.


Helen R. Quinn is professor of physics at Stanford University, where she also serves as education outreach manager at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Quinn is a theoretical physicist who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003. She was president of the American Physical Society in 2004. In addition to her scholarship in physics, Quinn is interested in science education and the continuing education of science teachers. She was an active contributor to the California State Science Standards development process. She is past president of the nonprofit Contemporary Physics Education Project. Previously she served as a member of the NRC’s Committee on Physics of the Universe and on the Federal Coordinating Committee on Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. She has a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University (1967).


Brian J. Reiser is professor of learning sciences at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. His research concerns the de-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×

sign and study of investigation environments and inquiry support tools for science. These projects explore the design of computer-based learning environments that scaffold investigation and scientific argumentation about biological phenomena and the design of inquiry support tools that help students organize, reflect on, and communicate about the progress of their investigations. This work is being conducted as part of the initiatives of the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools, which is working to understand how to make learning technologies a pervasive part of science classrooms in urban schools. Reiser is also a member of the core faculty of the Center for Curriculum Materials in Science, a collaboration of Project 2061, Michigan state, Northwestern University, and the University of Michigan. He serves on the editorial boards of Interactive Learning Environments and the Journal of the Learning Sciences. He recently served as a design team member for the NRC’s Committee on Test Design for K-12 Science Achievement. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University (1983).


Deborah L. Roberts is an experienced teacher of elementary and middle school science who currently serves as science instructional specialist with the Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools. Until 2004, for many years, she taught science and mathematics in grades 1 through 8. In 2001 she was named Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning K-12 scholar. Throughout her career as a classroom teacher, she has also been active in education research. She has presented research on teaching at the American Educational Research Association, the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, the National Science Teachers Association, and other national and regional science teaching and research venues. Her current position entails writing and developing curriculum with classroom teachers, training teachers in inquiry science teaching methods, and supervising elementary science instruction across the district. She also teaches pre-service courses in science curriculum and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in science education at the University of Maryland, College Park.


Leona Schauble is professor of education at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include the relations between everyday reasoning and more formal, culturally supported, and schooled forms of thinking, such as scientific and mathematical reasoning. Her research focuses on such topics as belief change in the contexts of scientific experimentation, everyday reasoning, causal inference, and the origins and development of model-based reasoning. Prior to her work at Vanderbilt, she worked at the University of Wisconsin, the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Children’s Television Workshop in New York. Schauble recently served as a member of the Strategic Educational Research Partner-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×

ship, an NRC-affiliated venture designed to construct a powerful knowledge base, derived from both research and practice that will support the efforts of school people at all levels with the ultimate goal of significantly improving student learning. Schauble has a Ph.D. in developmental and educational psychology from Columbia University (1983).


Heidi A. Schweingruber (Co-Study Director) is a senior program officer for the Board on Science Education (BOSE). She was a program officer on the NRC study that produced America’s Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science and is currently directing a congressionally mandated review of NASA’s precollege education programs. Prior to joining the NRC, she was a senior research associate at the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education where she served as a program officer for the preschool curriculum evaluation program and for a grant program in mathematics education. She was also a liaison to the Department of Education’s Mathematics and Science Initiative and an adviser to the Early Reading First program. Before moving into policy work, she was the director of research for the Rice University School Mathematics Project, an outreach program in K-12 mathematics education, and taught in the psychology and education departments. She has a Ph.D. in psychology (developmental) and anthropology, and a certificate in culture and cognition from the University of Michigan (1997).


Andrew W. Shouse (Co-Study Director) is an educational researcher and policy analyst whose interests include teacher development, science education in formal and informal settings, and communication of educational research to policy and practice audiences. In his current position as senior program officer with the NRC’s BOSE, he is director of Learning Science in Informal Environments, a synthesis study of the literatures on learning science in nonschool settings (sponsored by NSF). He is co-study director (with Heidi Schweingruber) of Science Learning in Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade, a synthesis of the multidisciplinary literature on science learning, which will provide strategic guidance for future research and development in science education (sponsored by NSF, NIH, and the Merck Institute for Science Education) and director of the Science Learning in Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade practitioner project (a “translation” of the Science Learning in Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade report findings for a diverse practice audience). Prior to joining the NRC, Dr. Shouse worked as an educational research and evaluation consultant, science center administrator, and elementary and middle grades teacher. Dr. Shouse received his Ph.D. in curriculum, teaching, and educational policy from Michigan State University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×

Carol L. Smith is associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is interested in understanding how concepts develop and change, in both children and scientists, and why some science concepts are very hard for students to understand. Her research focuses on characterizing students’ initial commonsense theories in some domains (which often contain concepts that are incommensurable with the scientists’ concepts) and understanding the processes by which students can restructure and change these concepts. She has examined the role of several practices in facilitating conceptual change in schooling contexts, and how different schooling contexts affect students’ general conceptions of the nature of science, learning, and knowledge. She recently served as a design team member for the NRC’s Committee on Test Design for K-12 Science Achievement. She has a Ph.D. in personality and developmental studies from Harvard University (1976).

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×
Page 366
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×
Page 367
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×
Page 368
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×
Page 369
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×
Page 370
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×
Page 371
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.
×
Page 372
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What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as:

  • When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child's development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects?
  • What role does nonschool learning play in children's knowledge of science?
  • How can science education capitalize on children's natural curiosity?
  • What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning?
  • How can teachers be taught to teach science?

The book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children's learning of science—about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science education—teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.

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