Welcome to the Moving Next Generation Science Standards into Practice: A Middle School Ecology Unit and Teacher Professional Development Model website!
Suzanne Wilson (on the right) discusses the project with Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead (on the left). (Photo credit: Shawn Kornegay, Neag School)
“You can’t just put teaching materials into teachers’ hands and expect them to figure it out.”
—Neag Endowed Professor of Teacher Education Suzanne Wilson
The Project as a Whole
Schools and teachers face unprecedented challenges in meeting the ambitious goals of integrating core interdisciplinary science ideas with science and engineering practices as described in new science standards. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), in collaboration with the University of Connecticut (UConn), and the Lawrence Hall of Science (the Hall), will develop a middle school ecology unit and related teacher professional development that will help high-need and urban middle school students, including English Language Learners, understand these ideas and related practices.
UConn's Work
Suzanne Wilson, Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead and their team of research assistants at the University of Connecticut are developing measures of teacher learning that could be used in future evaluation of the effectiveness of professional development programs like this one. Our collective goal is to develop curriculum materials for teachers, high quality professional development that supports teachers as they iteratively learn to adopt and adapt those materials in their classrooms, and authentic measures of student and teacher learning that can be used to assess the quality of the materials and professional development we have generated.