The Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute has received a $750,000 NASA grant to help teachers improve science education. The grant will fund professional development workshops and creation of teaching resources for elementary and middle school teachers in Arizona, Texas and Wisconsin.
PSI scientists are collaborating on the project with the Tucson Regional Science Center, a partnership of three independent school districts and several charter schools that is led by Tucson Unified School District. The RSC supports member districts with nationally recognized instructional kits that include books, readers, teachers’ guides and other materials that support science curricula.
“This collaboration will lead to further opportunities to engage teachers and students in space science, and will increase innovative and effective educational efforts to apply real-life applications to how we learn science,” said RSC Coordinator Joan Gilbert.
Recent budget cuts to education have reduced or eliminated many professional development opportunities in Arizona, which makes the PSI workshops even more important, said Larry Lebofsky, a PSI senior education specialist.
“Our workshops give teachers the credit hours they need to renew teaching certificates, as required by the State of Arizona,” Lebofsky said. “The workshops also provide teachers with experience and knowledge that will help them pass the AEPA (Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessments) Middle Grades General Science Test. This test is a state requirement for those who teach science at the middle-school level.”
Materials developed through the grant also will be used to enhance science education in Texas and Wisconsin, where some of PSI’s scientists are located, said David Crown, PSI assistant director and principal investigator on the project. PSI includes researchers in 15 states, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Russia and Australia. “PSI’s distributed nature makes it possible for us to easily expand our programs and provide resources to many other communities” Crown said.
He noted that NASA received 103 proposals for its newly created program — Opportunities in Education and Public Outreach for Earth and Space Science — and PSI’s proposal was among the 28 selected.
Crown said the funding will allow PSI to:
Offer a series of professional development workshops that target elementary and middle school teachers in the Tucson area.
Create a series of instructional rock kits to be used in the workshops and that teachers can take to their classrooms.
Generate materials, including scientific visualizations and web-based virtual tours of planetary surfaces, to teach key concepts in earth and space science.
Establish a web-based “Ask-An-Expert” site where students, teachers, and the public can directly interact with PSI scientists.
The grant will help PSI to further develop and expand the NASA-supported teacher workshops (www.psi.edu/epo/papt) it has been conducting since September 2008. So far, 57 science teachers from 42 schools in Tucson have attended six offerings of three different workshops in the “Planets are Places Too” series: “Moon- Earth System,” “Exploring the Terrestrial Planets,” and “Impact Cratering.” Teachers who attended the workshops teach approximately 3,600 students in grades 1 through 9.
“Most elementary school teachers have limited backgrounds and training in the sciences” said Thea Cañizo, a PSI education support specialist. “These workshops help teachers gain knowledge about astronomy, geology, and planetary science. They participate in hands-on exercises using images, maps, and the results from their own experiments, modeling the processes and skills scientists use. They can then take this knowledge of how science is conducted into their classrooms with greater confidence in their ability to teach science.”
Teachers who have attended the workshops cite hands-on activities, learning the scientific process, and interaction with scientists as the top three benefits, Lebofsky said.
Marguerite Samples, a teacher at Tucson’s Dunham elementary school said, “Recently I took a class offered at PSI and was thrilled with my experience. Not only did I gain insight about Mars and our neighboring planets, but I discovered a new resource that I can tap into to enrich the minds of my students. Besides offering classes to teachers, PSI has wonderful resources you can bring into the classroom and guest speakers who can come and talk with students.”
“It was a great experience and I am excited to see what other classes they have to offer,” she said.
In addition to principal investigator David Crown, the project team includes PSI educators Lebofsky, Cañizo, Sanlyn Buxner and Steven Croft, as well as PSI scientists Alice Baldridge, Les Bleamaster, Frank Chuang, Steve Kortenkamp, Elisabetta Pierazzo, and Aileen Yingst. Others involved in the project include Steven Anderson, director of the University of Northern Colorado’s Mathematics and Science Teaching Institute, and Christopher Andersen and Bill Schmitt of the Science Center of Inquiry.
