Pre-Workshop Products
Pre-Workshop Products
| Proposal for Grant
to hold Planning Workshop |
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| Description of
and Invitation to Planning Workshop |
|
| Workshop Agenda |
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| Bios/Photos of
Education Teams who attended Planning Workshop |
Post-Workshop Products
Assumptions:
Assessment will be based on the stated objectives of programs and activities.
Assessment will be at the LTER Program level, but Programs should collaborate
on development of plans, instruments, and procedures to avoid duplication
of efforts.
Instruments and procedures should be assembled from existing sources
where possible to avoid the extensive costs of development and validation.
It is highly probable that NSF will require an external project evaluator
as part of the project consultant staff.
Assessment will focus on:
1. Programs and activities including opportunities to learn for teachers,
students, practitioners, community members
2. Learning and change among the four following groups:
• Students from K - 16
• Teachers from K - 16
• Adult community members
• Practitioners: foresters, ext. service, managers, city managers,
etc.
3. Collaborative work among scientists, education specialists, informal
education specialists, and classroom teachers
Program evaluations for each of the four target groups:
Does program have an inquiry component?
Do opportunities to learn match program goals (for 4 target groups)
Is the program age appropriate?
Is the content accurate and valid?
Is the vision appropriate and does the presentation convincingly support
scientific viewpoints.
In general terms, what kind of evidence will we accept for students,
teachers, adult community members and practitioners?
Numbers of participants
Changes in content understanding
Changes in inquiry skills
Changes in vision of environmental issues
More specifically what data will we seek for students?
Development of skills and techniques for inquiry
Development of understanding of inquiry as a process for formulating
knowledge
Development of understanding of relevant concepts
• Are students able to develop relevant concepts as a consequence of
inquiry?
• Do students revise ideas based on inquiry?
Development of students' capability to transfer and apply knowledge.
Assess students' confidence in and attitudes about ecology
What data will we seek for teachers?
Development of skills and techniques for inquiry.
Development of understanding of inquiry as a process for formulating
knowledge.
Development of understanding of relevant concepts.
• Are teachers able to develop relevant concepts as a consequence of
inquiry?
• Do teachers revise ideas based on inquiry?
Development of teachers' capability to transfer and apply knowledge.
• Assess teachers' enthusiasm and interest in ecology.
• Skill and techniques for teaching inquiry based ecological science.
• Skill and techniques for assessing students' inquiry in based ecological
science.
What data will we seek for adult community members and practitioners?
• Capability to revise understandings based on evidence.
• Improved understanding of the nature and practice of ecological science.
• Improved application of information to new and exisitng environmental
issues in the workplace or in the community.
Dissemination of Educational Program
Source: LTER site, cooperating university, and partners
Audience: Teachers, students, adult community members, practitioners
Other LTER sites
Outcomes:
• Education program
• Process of program development
• Data from LTER sites/research programs
• Data from Assessment of LTER educational programs
• Educational materials
• Student demonstration of learning
Mode of transfer:
• Electronic media
• Web-sites
• Video presentations
• Printed materials
• Workshops and conferences
Next steps:
Develop a detailed evaluation plan
Assemble/develop tools and approaches for assessing
Develop a plan for cross-site evaluation
The Education Committee will serve as an advisory group to the LTER Coordinating Committee.
Each LTER site that is participating in educational programs must have an active member on the Educational Committee, similar to the structure of the Data Managers Group.
The Purpose of this Committee is the following:
-Identify options for funding educational programs and projects and
inform all sites of the possibilities.
-Serve as centralized information point for all the LTER sites.
-To advocate role of education in LTER to LTER
-To advocate role of education in LTER to NSF
-To "Keep science in science education"
-To act as an Advisory body to NSF for future RFPs
-To Establish partnerships between scientists, educators, datamanagers,
teachers, -- these partnerships (These demographics should be reflected
in composition of Committee)
-To plan future workshops
-To mentor proposal writing activities - either network wide or site
or regional
-To mentor post-docs who become Education Personnel at LTER Sites
ROLE OF THE NETWORK OFFICE
- Information clearing house - through e-mail announcements and WWW
development
- Provide logistical support for meetings and workshops
What can LTER's bring to K-12 education and teaching?
What can be the role of teachers in LTER's?
Question 1: What can LTER's bring to K-12 education and teaching?
Provide resource coordinator to serve as outreach coordinator, contact
person, look for sustaining money
Provide comparable data from different ecosystems (assumes data accessible
and in comprehensible format)
Resource to ask questions
Physical site to have access to use (limited access for select educators/student)
Guidelines from programs for setting up parallel schoolyard research
project:
Types of research
Types of data being collected
Is there a contact person?
What types of support resources are available/
Teachers as part of research teams on site
Speaker bureau or designated liaison
Provide experiences for teachers to learn basic research methods, nature
of science inquiry, statistics/data analysis
Grant writing workshops
Resource repository : education component of website
Researchers do 3 hour awareness workshop for teachers or public
Open to on-going relationship with school/teacher
Question 2: What can be the role of teachers in LTER's?
Help develop resources/curriculum
Teachers contribute what they develop to LTER to expand collection
of resources for other teachers
Mentored teachers serve as mentors and resource people for other teachers
Partners in grant writing
Teachers serve as liaisons to community (education and general public)
Teachers with research experience serve as connections with broader
education community: work with school groups, facilitate teacher inservice,
communicate to public role of LTER site and mission of LTERs
Help develop education programs
Communicate to researchers that some students and teachers are capable
of sophisticated work
Provide "refresher" to researchers on what happens in schools and what
today's students are like
Provide help in using outreach component effectively.
Responsibilities of Teachers:
Cultivate and nurture their own network of support and resources
Reach out for resources to build own program (writing grants, developing
skills, finding resource people, personal skill/knowledge development
Any proposals submitted for education projects from the LTER Network should begin with identification of the subject-matter content of the project.
Two types of proposals are anticipated:
(1) Projects for which the subject-matter content emphasis is one of
the five core topics identified by the LTERnet (pattern and control of
primary production, spatial and temporal distribution of populations, pattern
and control of organic matter accumulation, patterns and movements of inorganic
inputs, and patterns and frequency of disturbances); and
(2) Projects for which the content emphasis differs from the above,
but which is clearly articulated, is consistent with relevant national
science education content standards, and which represents a scientific
strength of the LTER program. Projects may involve single LTER sites or
multiple LTER sites.
Long-term ecological research projects—and the data sets they produce—offer unique opportunities for teachers and students to understand the nature of ecosystems and the nature of science. Funding priority will go to projects that clearly describe how LTER resources will be used to teach concepts and ideas—such as long-term population changes, spatial variation and dynamics of resources, and the evolution of scientific theories—that are best understood through long-term study. (Process of how research is done, scientific procedures)
Models:
Cross-site teacher projects
Cross school-site student projects
Field trip or virtual field trip
Training and collection of data
Post data on web, compare to other sites (both LTER and school)
Electronic data-sharing and communication projects
Other (e.g., providing coverage of LTER research via educational television
(a la the McMurdo Integrated Science project) or other media
Networking strategies:
Similar projects at multiple sites, with data coordination.
Faculty enhancement workshops for teacher teams at the field station during the summer, focusing on involving teachers in research, developing a strategy for working it into their home classrooms (non-residential).
Multiple-site multiple-year workshops in which teachers (and education staff) visit >1 field station over an extended period of time.
Common protocols used across sites, along with curriculum materials developed across sites. Plan together, recruit together, etc.
Train teachers to run training programs themselves. Send one person across LTER sites. Use success in implementing local projects as a screening criterion for choosing teachers to send to more remote sites.
Identify cross-site needs: evaluation, data management, etc
Copyright ©1998 Long-Term Ecological
Research
Please contact Patricia
Sprott with questions or comments about this website back