NEW: Clark Prof’s Next-Gen Science Exemplar Scores $200K NSF Grant

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

GoLocalWorcester News Team

Clark University Professor of Education Sarah Michaels is part of team developing an innovative new teacher learning resources for science education, the Next Generation Science Exemplar, and the researchers were recently awarded a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to bolster their efforts.

The Next Generation Science Exemplar is a web-based platform to aid teachers in better understanding and incorporating the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), along with the National Research Council's Framework for K-12 Science Education.

“Kids do love science and the teachers know that,” said Michaels. “The sense that you cannot get in the abstract—from only reading the framework or the standards—is a vision of what implementation actually looks like, feels like and entails in a real classroom with 25 or more linguistically and culturally diverse students. The NGSX web-based prototype will help you see it, hear it and imagine yourself doing it. You have to see the complexity.”

Michaels is principal investigator of the NSF grant, working closely with Jean Moon, Founder and Principal of the Tidemark Institute and Visiting Scholar at the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise at Clark, and Professor Brian Reiser, of the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

Nancy Budwig, Clark University Associate Provost and Dean of Research, said the Next Gen Exemplar System “represents a major breakthrough in helping teachers and other school leaders translate theory into practice. This platform illustrates in tangible ways how Clark researchers, in collaboration with others, provide vision for translating research into useable knowledge. This work holds promise for reforming teacher practice in substantial ways.”

“Clark University is a leader in this kind of innovative vision of professional learning, where people are being inducted into new and complex practices, but in a way that is scalable and accessible,” Michaels said.