ASU News - Education + Education + Education

Arizona's Teacher of the Year is ASU grad, current student

mattcrum — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:27:20 -0700

She describes herself as “born to teach,” and it shows. Arizona State University graduate Joy Weiss was honored Nov. 5 as Arizona’s 2010 Teacher of the Year by the Arizona Educational Foundation.

“Being a teacher is much more than teaching students, but an opportunity to inspire, encourage and support others to become the best they can be,” says Weiss, a Mesa native who earned her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education in 1998 and is currently taking graduate courses through ASU’s College of Teacher Education and Leadership (CTEL) to obtain a reading endorsement.

Weiss, who now lives in Phoenix and teaches first grade at Balsz Elementary School, regularly serves as a mentor and role model for future teachers who work as interns and student teachers in her classroom. “These experiences with ASU students push me to continue learning,” she says. “It is so exciting to work with ‘fresh’ minds and gain perspective on your career through new eyes. I am excited to work with each ASU student who enters my classroom.”

Not being one to do things half-heartedly, Weiss also excels in the CTEL reading classes she has been taking at ASU’s West campus. One of her professors, Frank Serafini, describes Weiss as an excellent, dedicated student. “Her work is some of the best I've seen, and her dedication to her students comes through in her work,” says Serafini, an associate professor of literacy education and an award-winning author of children’s books.

Weiss’ current studies at ASU represent a continuation of a mutually beneficial relationship between her and the university. “As an undergraduate I had many professors who pushed me beyond my comfort zone and provided safe environments for me and my fellow students to discuss issues without fear of ridicule or embarrassment,” she says.

In addition to mentoring current college students, Weiss goes above and beyond in a myriad ways at Balsz Elementary School. She trains and supports other Balsz teachers in the integration of technology in the classroom; mentors new teachers; coaches fellow teachers on English Language Development (ELD) issues as well as the school’s new math curriculum; coordinates supplemental summer and fall programs; assists with a weekly Family Night program for the local community and more.

Weiss says her career path was set in her first few weeks of kindergarten. “When I met Mrs. Walker, I knew that someday I would be a teacher,” she says.

“The satisfaction I get from teaching is difficult to express in words because it looks different every day. In some cases it’s from the simple way that I show love to a student who needs extra care that day. Other times it’s the triumphs of students understanding the knowledge that's been taught and being able to help others gain the same understanding. I don't believe there is any other profession that allows such a great opportunity to be an active participant with one’s ‘clients’ – the students.”

The Teacher of the Year honor brings with it a $20,000 award, a laptop computer, a trip to space camp in Huntsville, Ala., and a scholarship to pursue a doctoral degree. Weiss also is now Arizona’s nominee for the National Teacher of the Year award.

“I am very excited for what this honor brings to me,” Weiss says. “The opportunities for professional growth are profound, as well as the chance to work with colleagues around the state and shed new insights on the triumphs and tribulations of education. I look forward to working with others to do my best to bring hope and inspiration back into the classrooms. This award is very humbling, and the process which took me here has made me think very deeply and has shown me who I am at the deepest part of me and what I truly believe as an educator.”

Epilepsy research project examines teacher knowledge, confidence

vpmartin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:38:34 -0600

Jessie Siemens was a smart first grader who was disciplined for misbehaving and daydreaming as she fell further and further behind her peers. Then a summer school teacher noticed Jessie frequently “zoned out” and suggested her parents get her medical attention.

Jessie was diagnosed with absence seizures and treated with medication. Unfortunately, she’d already lost her crucial first year of school. Now in third grade, she’s catching up with her classmates through private tutoring, an individualized education plan and teachers who are aware of her learning needs.

“It was an educator who pointed out there was a problem,” says mom Nancy Siemens. “If more teachers across the board had knowledge of this it would really help. (The summer school teacher) knew enough to at least tell us to get it addressed and not just assume it was a behavioral issue.”

Cases such as Jessie’s are the impetus of an epilepsy research project by Arizona State University associate professor David Wodrich. With a grant from the Epilepsy Foundation of America, Wodrich is working to determine what teachers know about seizure disorders and their confidence in teaching children with epilepsy.

The study examines the theory that teachers who understand epilepsy and are confident about teaching children with epilepsy can better deal with the risks, embarrassment and stress associated with seizures in the classroom. It also will help identify how epilepsy affects student learning and attention.

“Nobody knows whether this idea holds up,” Wodrich says. “This is the first step in trying to figure out if that’s true. If it is true, then we want to have a way of informing teachers to ensure they are confident. This grant is designed to create a way to objectively measure how much teachers know and how confident they are.”

Research indicates that children and teens with epilepsy risk peer, family and school problems, but there has been little research about the educational consequences of epilepsy aside from these psychosocial effects. While some work has focused on teacher misconceptions or bias, nothing has specifically addressed their factual knowledge about epilepsy.

Children with epilepsy may take several medicines, which have varying side effects and can impact attention and the ability to process information. They also can have underlying neurological conditions that affect memory, organizational skills and the ability to focus. Without knowledge of these issues and confidence in teaching these children, the question remains how accommodating teachers can be to learning in students with epilepsy. It also is understandable why some teachers may be anxious about the prospect of teaching a student with epilepsy.

This study is just one part of a bigger set of studies on the educational morbidity of chronic illness on students, including diabetes and asthma. Wodrich, a former director of psychology at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, is working with pediatric epileptologists Randa Jarrar and Jeffrey Buchhalter at Phoenix Children’s Hospital to develop an accurate method of measuring teacher knowledge and confidence.

“We’re trying to match the educational piece with the medical piece of the puzzle so we can better understand what’s going on with these kids,” Wodrich says. “One reason there are not more studies of this kind is that physicians don’t have contact with educators, and educational researchers don’t have the medical contacts. It takes people who can bridge that gap.”

The initial study will determine and compare knowledge and confidence of teachers who have taught a student with epilepsy as well as those who have not. Researchers then will be able to use the information to develop future projects that will enhance their knowledge and bolster confidence. Since children spend most of their waking hours at school, Jarrar says it's important for teachers to recognize how epilepsy affects student learning.

“They can have attention problems, specific learning disabilities, hyperactivity, or they can have trouble because of missed school days because of seizures. They might get behind or already be behind and get even further behind,” Jarrar says. “They can have social problems at school as well with peer interaction and feeling different from other children because of the seizures.”

While it is not reasonable to ask a teacher to determine if a child is struggling because of a medication side effect, she says it is important for the teacher to understand the potential for problems and recognize the signs of seizures.

“There are many different types of seizures. Motor seizures are easy to recognize, such as jerking and twitching,” Jarrar says. “But with other types the teacher may think the child is daydreaming or not paying attention. If there are odd movements, she may think the child is being silly. Waving hands or smacking their lips is not typical behavior.”

Jarrar says teachers also need to know how to react during a seizure. “One cannot interrupt the activity by saying, ‘Johnny, stop what you are doing.’ It’s involuntary.”

She said teachers who recognize these situations in the classroom and report them to parents can help physicians better treat the epilepsy or identify learning disabilities or co-morbid conditions such as attention deficit disorder. Medications can be adjusted to reduce breakthrough seizures that interfere with learning.

Through the frustration and worry, the Siemens have been able to get Jessie the educational assistance she needs to get her back on track, especially in reading.

“She lost a lot of valuable time,” Nancy says. “Now that she’s starting to read, it’s like a whole new world is opening up to her. It should have been opening up to her two years ago, not now.”

Artiles recognized for scholarship, service to children with disabilities

vpmartin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:18:21 -0600

Fresh on the heels of a prestigious residential fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and his election to the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Alfredo J. Artiles, a professor of special education with the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education at Arizona State University, is being honored by his alma mater.

Artiles has received the 2009 Curry Foundation Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Virginia for his outstanding scholarship and service to advance the education of children with disabilities.

“Dr. Artiles is at the forefront of his field with a strong commitment to improving the lives of children who have been marginalized by their communities,” said Robert Pianta, the dean of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.

He has published extensively in the general, special and bilingual education fields, and his research in the United States and Latin America examines the role of cultural processes in special education placement practices and teacher learning in urban schools.

He has been a consultant to Harvard University’s and UCLA’s Civil Rights Projects on equity issues in special education practices. A commissioned study he conducted for the UCLA Civil Rights Project examined the impact of language-restrictive policies on the placement of English language learners in special education before and after Proposition 227 in California and Proposition 203 in Arizona. The study will be included in an edited volume published by Teacher’s College Press.

Artiles and Elizabeth Kozleski, an ASU professor, are co-principal investigators of a three-year project funded by a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support reform efforts and technical assistance for schools and communities in their efforts to tackle equity and access issues in public education.

Energized by his residential interdisciplinary fellowship at Stanford, he returned to ASU in August. The fellowship gives scholars the freedom to pursue their research interests and join a community of interdisciplinary scholars to design projects pursued beyond the fellowship year.

“It was a very stimulating and productive experience,” he says. “Stanford has a distinguished tradition of bringing together cohorts of scholars at the top of their fields to work on timely issues using interdisciplinary lenses.”

While at Stanford, Artiles and Kozleski conducted a conference that brought together scholars from 10 nations to examine questions of equity in inclusive education. With support from the Spencer and Motorola Foundations, these researchers are writing conference papers to be published in an edited book by Harvard Education Press. They will meet at the University of Hannover, Germany, this fall to write a research grant proposal to conduct a comparative study.

Artiles conducted another conference at CASBS to create an interdisciplinary doctoral seminar on how the ideology of colorblindness disciplines the production of research knowledge about the structural nature of race. Research knowledge about race is used in a wide array of disciplines such as urban sociology and planning, literary studies, education, psychology, public health, anthropology and legal studies and has the potential to inform contemporary policy and practice in school reform, voting rights, affirmative action, higher education admissions and residential desegregation efforts. He plans to collaborate with the scholars who attended the event to design the seminar and pilot it in the near future at ASU.

The Stanford experience enabled Artiles to connect with faculty in legal studies, sociology, psychology and anthropology.

“I started to use literature that more systematically examines the role of space in human behavior,” he says. “I was able to strengthen my understanding of analytic models that link local processes with larger structural influences.”

As the vice president of the AERA’s Division G: Social Context of Education, Artiles represents this division’s membership and provides leadership, advice and input in the organization’s vision, priorities, future initiatives, needs and opportunities.

“One of the themes I want to emphasize during my term is bringing a divisionwide discussion about interdisciplinary research on social contexts of education, which has received a lot of attention in the social sciences in recent years,” he says. “I’ve noticed the term has different meanings for different purposes and there are different assumptions underlying its uses.

“I want Division G members to refine their theoretical understanding of interdisciplinary research and invite established scholars to reflect on the contributions and impact interdisciplinary inquiry has had on their distinguished careers. Contemporary scholarship on the social contexts of education continues to be informed by interdisciplinary models, but we need to spend time thinking theoretically about the notions we bring to the work and strengthen the methodological approaches we apply based on these models.”

Sparking innovation in engineering education

jkullman — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:20:30 -0600

Dean and faculty member taking roles in national academy’s effort to bolster country’s competitive edge in engineering and technology

Winslow Burleson is convinced that budding engineers and scientists could be better educated if colleges and universities gave them more opportunities to fail. He encourages “failing early and often.”

It may be the most effective way of helping novices overcome the fear of failure that is “a significant barrier to learning,” says the Arizona State University engineer.

Some of the world’s most successful people and leading experts have excelled precisely because they have failed again and again, he says.

He also thinks students would be better served by pushing them to strive for solutions to the most complex and difficult problems, rather than letting them settle for taking small steps toward easy goals.

Burleson is incorporating that philosophy into his development of “motivational environments” – using interactive educational technologies that foster “intrinsically motivated mixed-reality cyber learning experiences.”

Such innovative work and unconventional ideas have earned Burleson an invitation to the first Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium, organized by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

He’ll be one of about 50 of “the nation's brightest young engineering researchers and educators” attending the Nov. 15-18 event near Washington, D.C., to share ideas and co-author a charter for implementing new educational approaches at their institutions.

Deirdre Meldrum, dean of the ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and director of the Center for Ecogenomics at the university’s Biodesign Institute, is on the symposium’s seven-member planning committee, along with leaders from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, The Boeing Co., and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Burleson and other participants were chosen to participate from a highly competitive pool of applicants nominated by fellow engineers or deans.

"We want the young engineers involved in the Frontiers of Engineering Education program to become forceful agents of change in exploring and inventing new and effective teaching and learning approaches,” Meldrum says.

“It will require exceedingly well-educated and creative engineers to maintain our nation’s competitive edge globally in the coming decades,” she says. “That makes it critically important to find ways of improving engineering education.”

NAE leaders want to expand the endeavor beyond the university level. Meldrum says fostering awareness of the importance of engineering, and recruiting and retaining the best students, “means this advancement of innovative teaching has to reach into elementary schools, high schools and life-long learning programs.”

Burleson is an assistant professor of human-computer interaction in the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, a part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

He also is on the graduate faculty of the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, a partnership of the engineering schools and ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

He is integrating engineering, science, design, entrepreneurship and industry collaboration in developing a learning-by-doing approach that couples classroom education with students’ exposure to research pursuits.

The overarching goal is to more fully prepare students “to pursue and excel at highly ambitious and profoundly meaningful activity,” he says.

He sees his work as one example of “radically transforming the university in ways that Dean Meldrum and others at ASU are calling for. It’s about broadening of minds and making the next generation of engineers capable of facing society’s biggest technological challenges, and succeeding.”

The National Academy of Engineering is an independent, nonprofit institution that serves as an adviser to government and the public on issues in engineering and technology.

Its members consist of the nation's premier engineers, who are elected by their peers for their distinguished achievements. Established in 1964, NAE operates under the congressional charter granted to the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

Degree program to train tomorrow’s leaders of education

lccampb — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:56:11 -0600

ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education has launched a three-year Doctor of Education degree program, which prepares candidates for top administrative positions in two- and four-year colleges and universities, focuses on serving diverse communities, and offers a creative approach to completing dissertations.

The Leadership for Changing Times (LCT) EdD degree program prepares intellectual leaders for a range of careers in higher and postsecondary education, with a unique emphasis on innovative practices that serve diverse communities within various institutional types. Using a researcher/practitioner model, the program debuted this fall with 25 students selected from 40 applicants, with extensive experience as administrators and faculty in higher education.

“The changing face of education, which includes enduring budget cuts, more diverse students and advancing technologies will require administrators to be flexible,” says Caroline Turner, the Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Education, a professor of policy, leadership and curriculum, and the director of the LCT program.

Turner says the delivery method and format of the rigorous program recognizes the unique needs of working professionals with full-time responsibilities.

Several program features are designed to mitigate student isolation and attrition in the program. Students who have similar themes for their dissertations will work in teams of four or five to collaborate, critique and support each other on their progress, including the development of their research questions and their literature review. Each team will have an assigned faculty adviser who will oversee the dissertation process with the assistance of a dissertation coach.

A large part of the program’s $3,000 per-year fee supports dissertation coaches who have doctoral degrees and who will spend approximately 18 months working with faculty to assist candidates in the completion of their dissertations.

“We want them to realize that they are not alone,” Turner says.

An overarching goal of the LCT program, she says, is to develop leaders with the knowledge, skills and understanding necessary to lead innovation and change in higher education, with an emphasis on serving diverse communities at two- and four-year colleges and universities.
Turner praises Carlos Castillo-Chavez, an ASU Regents’ Professor, and Joaquin Bustoz Jr., a professor of mathematical biology, for “doing the impossible.” As executive director of ASU’s Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute, Castillo-Chavez has successfully recruited minority and low-income students to his eight-week graduate student summer course which prepares them for doctoral degrees in mathematics at ASU and other universities around the country, including Cornell and Harvard University.

“They didn’t think they belonged,” Castillo-Chavez says. “Most of them were not thinking about a Ph.D. in mathematics. They don’t know that of the 1,200 Ph.D.s awarded in mathematics each year, only 40 go to Latinos. There used to be only 20. We have contributed a lot to that growth. People are saying this cannot be done. These students come back to our program year after year.”

Turner is planning to partner with Castillo-Chavez to arrange internships for her students with the Regents’ Professor, as part of their doctoral program.

The curriculum for these prospective top-tier administrators delves into the inner workings of universities nationwide, detailing how they are financed and organized; the role of governing bodies in making decisions; and insights into how policies are drawn.

Richard D. Fisher is the director of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School’s Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives, which focuses on STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) university-wide, and is a student in the new program.

Despite holding two nearly 20-year-old masters’ degrees in education and earth science, Fisher says his career options have been very limited without a doctorate.

But with a 60-hour work week, and raising a family, he says the “timing wasn’t right” to immerse himself into a doctorate program. The new program format has changed that.

“It is optimal for me as a full-time working professional to complete a program in a cohort model for the benefit of the collegiality with other working professionals,” he says.

He also is encouraged by the program’s projections that retirement of educational leaders will open up senior administrative positions for newly minted applicants with doctorate degrees.

Applications currently are being accepted for fall 2010 enrollment in the LCT doctoral program. For more information and to apply, visit http://education.asu.edu/highed_edd.

Carol Sowers, csowers31@live.com
(602) 524-4443
Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education

30 years of finches bring evolutionary theory to life

mcoulomb — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:38:44 -0600

Kyoto winners to speak at ASU Darwinfest

Peter and Rosemary Grant, Princeton professors emeritus and winners of the 2009 Kyoto Prize for Lifetime Achievement, come to Arizona State University on Oct. 28 to join in ASU’s Darwinfest, as part of the Darwin Distinguished Lecture Series. Their talk about their work with “Darwin’s Finches” starts at 6 p.m. in the Turquoise Ballroom at the Memorial Union on the Tempe campus and will be followed by a book signing.

With more than 35 years devoted to study in the Galapagos Islands, the Grants shared research has delved into questions about natural selection and evolutionary change. Their long-term studies (where the duo tagged thousands of birds — that's more than 20 generations) have allowed the Grants to trace lineages and demonstrate how evolutionary change — revealed through alternations in beak size and shape — can rapidly result via competition for resources and environmental stress. The Grants and their finch studies formed the basis of the novel “The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time” penned by Jonathon Weiner, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Following their talk, the Grants will sign copies of Weiner’s book and their own, titled “How and Why Species Multiply. The Radiation of Darwin’s Finches.”

As the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species” draws nigh, the last of the distinguished lecture series will be held on Nov. 13 at 2 p.m. in the Life Sciences E-wing, room 104. Noted author Janet Browne, Harvard University Aramont Professor of the History of Science will address “Celebrating Darwin: 1909, 1959 and 2009.”

ASU Darwinfest was developed by School of Life Sciences founding director Robert E. Page, Jr., in collaboration with Quentin Wheeler, VP and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Designed to bring attention to how bold ideas can transform science, technology and society, ASU Darwinfest has grown to become one of the most significant Darwin celebrations nationally. With more than 33 partners and sponsors, on and off campus, ASU launched the Darwin Distinguished Lecture Series with a visit from E. O. Wilson, The Future of Evolution Lecture Series (held at the Arizona Science Center), and a ASU workshop for public school teachers called “Translating Evolutionary Science into the Public Classroom Workshop.” Emissaries of the New American University, graduate students collaborated from a range of academic units at ASU and hosted festivals, movies, contest, panels and discussions with some of the foremost evolutionary scientists and theorists in the world. Darwinfest also served as a platform for the original and radical science being done on campus. Estimated attendance of core events exceeded 3,600, not including the popular Origins Initiative and lecturers Daniel Dennett and Jay Melosh, hosted by the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. The Darwin Distinguished Lectures have been captured as podcasts, featured by Apple on iTunesU and can be found at http://darwin.asu.edu. For more information about the upcoming talks by the Grants or Browne, contact Margaret.coulombe@asu.edu; (480) 727-8934.

Restructured colleges, grant target K-12 school performance

mattcrum — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:48:03 -0600

The restructuring of ASU’s colleges of education and the recent award of a $33.8 million federal grant to the College of Teacher Education and Leadership (CTEL) are but two milestones in the university’s effort to improve the quality of America’s K-12 education system.

“We have, as an institution, fundamentally come to the realization that we in the university are a major cause of the problem of the underperformance of K-12 education on a local, state and national level,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “K-12 performance issues are linked to a fundamental lack of innovation in the universities’ colleges of education, a fundamental lack of broadening the teacher pipeline to all university students as opposed to just college of education students, and a lack of accountability by the colleges of education relative to their product.

“What we’ve decided to do here at ASU, one of America’s largest producers of teachers, is to not only work on the conceptualizations of what we want teachers to do but to actually restructure ourselves. We have done this by creating two highly differentiated functions.”

Through the restructuring, CTEL has assumed responsibility for all ASU undergraduate and graduate programs on all campuses that lead to teacher certification. At the same time, the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education is focused on producing knowledge, new ideas and concepts, technically confident policy analysis, and graduate students in specialized fields.

“We have a group of faculty members and scholars at the Fulton Institute who are looking at broad concepts in education,” Crow said. “They are policy analysts and conceptualizers and theorists and philosophers of education and people bringing forth new kinds of technologies. We have concentrated them into a new institute for research in education – the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School.”

The restructured College of Teacher Education and Leadership has one purpose – to produce the finest teacher possible, from throughout the university by every means necessary.

“We plan to upgrade the professionalism of teacher training, upgrade the selection process for the future teachers, integrate the teacher education programs into the other colleges at the university, draw high quality students from science, from math, from engineering, from architecture, from English, from history, in addition to those that are specializing in education,” said Crow. “All the research that goes on at that college is about one thing: producing the best teacher.

“We will also create a teacher tracking program to determine how well a teacher we’ve trained is performing in their 4th grade class or in the 6th grade math program or in the kindergarten program.”

The progress ASU has already made in enhancing teacher education, said CTEL Dean Mari Koerner, has drawn substantial outside support. CTEL has been awarded a $33.8 million federal grant by the U.S. Department of Education Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Program. The five-year grant will expand CTEL’s Professional Development School (PDS) program.

PDS gives students three times the amount of hands-on, practical classroom experience as traditional teacher education programs. In rural communities, the program enables local residents to earn a university degree and Arizona teacher certification without having to relocate to an urban area of the state.

The new grant enables the PDS program, which already spans metropolitan Phoenix and the state, to expand to work in partnership with several more districts, including Mesa Public Schools, the state’s largest district; three additional districts on the Navajo Nation; and an additional district in the Tucson area. PDS targets high-need schools and communities, aiming to improve both the preparation of future teachers and the achievement of students.

Koerner said the restructured version of CTEL is now ideally positioned to make a significant positive impact on K-12 students in Arizona while becoming a national leader in innovative practices.

“In order to win the federal grant we just received, CTEL had to demonstrate a deep capacity to deliver all the elements necessary to achieve the project’s ambitious goals. By combining our history of school partnerships with the talents of extraordinary faculty on all ASU campuses, we possess the resources to be successful,” Koerner said.

Koerner said ASU’s commitment is to reinvent the definition of teacher education at a major research university. “Without abandoning the role of theory, we are radically reforming our teacher education programs around a unified model of clinical excellence,” she says. “The citizens of Arizona deserve nothing less than the best teachers in their children’s classrooms.”

Crow is convinced the reconceptualization of ASU’s education colleges puts both on a stronger track.

“What we have done is to reorganize and restructure ourselves to focus on our two separate tasks related to K-12 education,” he said. “One task is related to policy ideas, concepts and philosophy; the other focuses specifically on teacher production. We think that will tighten up our teacher production, allow us to focus our attention on teacher production, and enable us to take responsibility for teacher production.

“I think there’s a lot of complaining out there about colleges of education, with people saying, ‘Why isn’t anybody doing anything?’ They should come here and see what we’re doing, because I think that they’ll be impressed.”

Podcast: The Case for a New Kind of Public University

sjkeele1 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:04:03 -0600

Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University, talks to The Chronicle of Higher Education about how public research universities must find new ways to serve students and tackle social problems. He discusses how his institution has taken steps in that direction.

$1.25M grant to develop teacher training institute

vpmartin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:34:00 -0600

Initiative to maximize ASU’s impact on K-12 education

Arizona State University is combining energy, innovation and expertise in STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to develop a groundbreaking new institute that will produce a community of highly qualified middle school math and science teachers.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded ASU a five-year, $1.25 million Innovation through Institutional Integration (I3) grant to develop The Modeling Institute, a collaboration of the university’s most cutting-edge research in STEM education and teacher preparation.

A multidisciplinary team of ASU researchers will drive the project under the auspices of the Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (CRESMET) housed within the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. The project integrates some of the university’s most successful NSF-sponsored STEM education initiatives to maximize ASU’s impact on K-12 education locally and nationally. These projects include: Modeling Physics, Project Pathways, Professional Learning Community Resources, Project Lead the Way and Prime the Pipeline Project, Ask-a-Biologist, SMALLab, the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research, MARS education program, and Learning through Engineering Design and Practice.

Elizabeth Capaldi, ASU’s executive vice president and provost, is the project’s principal investigator.

“Arizona State University has a strong commitment to the improvement of K-12 education in Arizona, to enhancing the talents and skills of its teachers, and to assisting students to achieve greatness,” Capaldi says. “In the fields of mathematics, science and engineering, we are working collaboratively with school districts and the various departments and colleges on our four campuses to provide continuing education for teachers.

“Among our major priorities is ensuring that all teachers are equipped with deep content knowledge, are passionate about their fields of expertise and their teaching, and are well-prepared to develop the talents of their students.”

Modeling instruction is a highly successful teaching method used in many high school physics classrooms and increasing in popularity in chemistry and mathematics classrooms as well.

Research shows context is critical for student understanding of mathematical concepts and skills. Modeling makes the mental connection between math and science through meaningful activity, which leads to the development of mathematical ways of thinking about scientific phenomena.

The Modeling Institute is designed to engage and empower teachers and their students as they work directly with bench scientists in systematic and sustainable education programs and scientific communities.

The project director is Colleen Megowan-Romanowicz, an assistant professor with ASU’s College of Teacher Education and Leadership and a longtime practitioner of modeling instruction in high school physics and physical science. A recent ASU doctoral degree graduate, Megowan-Romanowicz says she specifically chose ASU for her doctoral studies to learn about modeling instruction from David Hestenes, a professor emeritus of physics who pioneered modeling workshops for high school teachers 20 years ago.

“This is something that I have been preparing to do for 35 years,” Megowan-Romanowicz says. “To actually be able to create a modeling program using the very best products of my colleagues from all over the ASU colleges is a dream assignment.”

In addition to serving as a hub for NSF-funded STEM education initiatives at ASU, Megowan-Romanowicz says the project will push middle school teacher preparation and best practices in modeling instruction to the forefront of this work.

“There is no reason that instruction based on conceptual models and the practices of modeling wouldn’t work in any subject at any grade level, so we are designing these courses with this best practice in mind,” she says.

The first spark of interest in the project was ignited by Melinda Romero, the executive director of staff development and instructional services with the Chandler Unified School District. Concerned about the lack of highly qualified middle school math and science teachers, Romero approached ASU about providing certified elementary school teachers with the higher level of content knowledge needed to increase student achievement within the STEM disciplines.

While there is an abundance of certified elementary school teachers, Romero says the school district has few qualified applicants for middle school math and science teaching assignments.

“We felt we weren’t tapping into the elementary certified teachers who have an interest in STEM, but don’t have the coursework or aren’t prepared to take the exam,” Romero says. She noted that 45 teachers in the Chandler district, alone, have expressed an interest in the program.
“This is an opportunity to build on their knowledge, give them more experience and broaden their expertise,” Romero says. “It would be a pool we could use to fill our middle school math and science positions when we have shortages, and we want them to be excited about math and science for our kids even if they don’t choose to teach in the middle school setting.”

ASU will accept 25 of the best qualified elementary school teacher applicants into the Modeling Institute for the first two years and an additional 50 teachers each of the following three years to produce 200 highly qualified math and science teachers over a five-year period.

The teachers enrolled in the Modeling Institute will have the opportunity to earn a master’s degree with an emphasis on strengthening their content knowledge in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“This is a hallmark of ASU’s philosophy of social embeddedness, of making ourselves available to our partners in the community,” says James Middleton, a professor and the director of CRESMET, as well as a co-principal investigator on the project.

He credits the long-standing personal and institutional relationships between ASU and the Chandler Unified School District with bringing the project to fruition.

Middleton says the collaborative concept embodies the New American University’s principles of access, excellence and impact, and builds on ASU’s history of teacher training and innovation.

“ASU, throughout its history, has had the wisdom of hiring scholars in the academic departments, top-level researchers and world-class scholars in our schools of education,” Middleton says. “We have the most innovative STEM education projects in the country. ASU is able to leverage its resources and sustain the infrastructure through economies of scale.

“By combining and integrating ASU’s best projects in science and mathematics education, we are hoping to create an institutionalized infrastructure by which we can make a real impact in the lives of teachers and children throughout the Valley. We will increase the number of students who are successful and who come to ASU to take part in transformative research and devote their lives to making the world a better place,” Middleton says.

The project brings together a multidisciplinary team of co-principal investigators from across ASU including: Carole Greenes, a professor of mathematics education, an associate vice provost for STEM Education and the director of the PRIME Center; Colleen Megowan-Romanowicz, an assistant professor of science education in the College of Teacher Education and Leadership and the director of the Modeling Institute; James A. Middleton, a professor of mathematics education and the director of CRESMET; David Birchfield, the director of the SMALLab initiative for K-12 Embodied and Mediated Learning; Monica Elser, the director of K-12 education and outreach programs for ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability; Tirupalavanam Ganesh, the assistant dean for information systems with the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education; Susan Haag, the director of research and evaluation for CRESMET; Charles Kazilek, the director of technology integration and outreach in the School of Life Sciences; Melinda Romero, the executive director of staff development and instructional services with Chandler Unified School District; and Wendy Taylor, an instructional specialist coordinator for the Mars Student Imaging Project in the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Grant expands innovative teacher preparation program

mattcrum — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:11:15 -0600

An Arizona State University program that immerses future teachers in school settings to maximize their readiness for successful careers as educators has been awarded a $33.8 million federal grant to expand across metropolitan Phoenix and the state of Arizona, spanning rural American Indian communities and the Tucson area.

ASU’s Professional Development School (PDS) program, developed by the College of Teacher Education and Leadership (CTEL), gives students three times the amount of hands-on, practical classroom experience as traditional teacher education programs. In rural communities, the program enables local residents to earn a university degree and Arizona teacher certification without having to relocate to an urban area of the state.

The five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Program will establish “PDS NEXT,” a program involving 15 urban and rural partner school districts in Arizona. Simultaneously, the grant makes possible a number of enhancements to the existing PDS program to produce graduates who are even more well-prepared for success in the classroom, while expanding PDS to implement comprehensive school reform and full-range professional development including a two-year induction program for new teachers.

“These new facets of PDS are designed to produce highly skilled new teachers who understand the content they are teaching and how best to teach it, and to foster measureable gains in effective school functioning, teacher retention, teaching effectiveness and student achievement,” says Scott Ridley, assistant dean of CTEL and principal investigator for the PDS NEXT grant. Ridley has guided the PDS program since it began in 1999 with one school, Longview Elementary, in central Phoenix’s Osborn Elementary School District.

“As a part of its effort to help solve the great challenges facing humanity, ASU has taken on the responsibility of improving public education,” says ASU President Michael M. Crow. “This grant will enable us to make great strides in preparing outstanding teachers. It is our commitment to measure our success in educating teachers by the success our graduates have in educating their students.”

To date, PDS has produced hundreds of elementary and junior high school teachers. Through the NEXT grant, the program will expand to include students wishing to teach at the high school level. CTEL will work in partnership with ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to provide high-quality content area instruction to future high school teachers as well as those planning to teach younger pupils.

Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty members collaborated with CTEL leadership to create a pilot for a discipline-based Master of Arts in Teaching, says Laura Turchi, clinical professor of English education and a co-principal investigator for the PDS NEXT grant. The project will train students in pedagogies designed to develop literacy in English, history, and languages.

“Our faculty will lead a series of consortia linking secondary schools, community colleges, and ASU,” Turchi says. “Each consortium will develop and support high-quality freshman and sophomore courses in reading, writing, critical inquiry, mathematics, and technologies at community colleges and the university. These courses will be available statewide through distance learning and provide models of rigorous and accessible curriculum for future teachers.”

New partner school districts participating through PDS NEXT are Mesa Public Schools; the Glendale, Roosevelt, and Phoenix Elementary School Districts; Sunnyside Unified School District in Tucson; the Window Rock, Ganado, and Kayenta districts in the Navajo Nation; University Public Schools; and the Phoenix Union High School District. Existing PDS partners including the Osborn, Chinle, Douglas, Indian Oasis-Baboquivari, and Gadsden districts also will participate in NEXT.

PDS targets high-need schools and communities, aiming to improve both the preparation of future teachers and the achievement of students. Mesa Public Schools (MPS), the state’s largest school district, plans to involve four of its elementary schools in the initiative, each serving low-income families.

“The principals at Adams, Lincoln, Guerrero and Whitman schools requested to participate because of the proposal’s focus on individual student growth, shared leadership structure and site-specific professional development opportunities,” says Michael B. Cowen, MPS superintendent of schools.

“We have been investigating ways to support teachers at lower-income schools through professional development, and the opportunity to partner with ASU’s PDS NEXT proposal couldn’t have come at a better time.”

Receipt of the grant will enable Ridley and his colleagues to incorporate TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement into the PDS curriculum. TAP is an initiative of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.

“We are committed to reinventing the definition of teacher education at a major research university,” says Mari Koerner, CTEL’s dean. “Without abandoning the role of theory, CTEL is radically reforming its teacher education programs around TAP, which represents a unified model of clinical excellence.

“We also have learned that an investment in our partner school districts is an investment in our own teacher education enterprise,” Koerner says. “Through genuine partnerships with 15 high-need urban and rural school districts, we will work to simultaneously reform struggling K-12 schools and our district-based teacher education programs.”

An additional partner in the NEXT project is the Rodel Foundation of Arizona, which will provide training to student teachers and mentor teachers that specifically addresses the challenges of teaching in high-poverty schools and focuses on research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. The PDS NEXT partnership also includes the ASU Vice President’s Office for Educational Partnerships, ASU’s original home for the TAP program within the university.

The award to CTEL is the largest among 28 Teacher Quality Partnership grants across the country announced by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

“The Obama Administration is committed to giving teachers the support they need to succeed in the classroom,” Duncan says. “The Teacher Quality Partnership grants will improve student academic achievement by strengthening teacher preparation, training and effectiveness and help school districts attract potential educators from a wide range of professional backgrounds into the teaching profession.”