Scientists and Teachers: seize the opportunity to promote your classroom research!

Forwarded AGU educational session announcement from Connie Walker, NOAO:

Dear Colleagues,

Seize the opportunity to submit abstracts for contributed papers to an exciting educational session at the December AGU meeting in San Francisco: Session ED13 "Teacher Professional Development Programs Promoting Authentic Scientific Research in the Classroom."

The session will focus on research experiences for teachers, the roles of scientists and education specialists, and authentic scientific research in the classroom. Specifically we are interested in soliciting contributions from scientists, education specialists, and teachers who are or have been directly involved with teacher-research experiences. (Abstracts submitted electronically are due: September 6, 2007 at 2359UT.)

-- Do you have a program you want to tell us about? We would enjoy hearing from professional development programs that incorporate authentic scientific research.

-- Do you have an internship program? We would value shared experiences from industry; from NSF-supported programs; from other teacher-scientist partnerships. The perspectives of people from other countries would add further dimension to the session.

-- We have a keen interest in hearing from exceptional teachers who can share their experiences and how they have successfully transferred the research experience to their classrooms.

-- We are planning to span a broad range of disciplines, institutions, agencies, and projects.

The description of the session is listed below. We hope you can join us in making this a successful session for a fourth year in a row. The on-line submission form for abstracts is available from the AGU WWW site at http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/. AGU policy allows one "education" abstract to be submitted in addition to a "science" abstract.

The AGU Fall Meeting will be held December 10-14 in San Francisco. For more information, please feel free to contact the session conveners listed below. If you would like to view last year's two oral sessions and one poster session, visit http://www.noao.edu/education/agu/.

Sincerely,
Connie Walker, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 520-318-8535, cwalker@noao.edu
Steven K. Croft, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 520-318-8495, scroft@noao.edu
Gail Scowcroft, University of Rhode Island, 401-874-6486, gailscow@gso.uri.edu

______________________

Session Description:

AGU Session ED13: "Teacher Professional Development Programs Promoting Authentic Scientific Research in the Classroom"

This session will focus on scientists, educators, education researchers, evaluators and funding agency program officers providing K-12 teachers with authentic research experiences in science and engineering. Presentations should highlight best practices for the “Teacher Research Experience” (TRE) model. Presentations by those who design, facilitate, evaluate, and fund TRE programs are especially encouraged, as well as presentations by teachers and scientists who have participated in such programs.

Suggested areas for presenters to address can include but are not limited to:
-- The enhanced transfer of knowledge from the teacher/researcher to the students through implementing a research program within the classroom
-- How these teacher professional development programs play an essential role in science education reform and teacher retention and renewal
-- Examples of effective programs and techniques for assessing TRE programs
-- The transformation of the educational environment into an authentic research center
-- How best to prepare teachers to become part of scientific research teams
-- The use of
+ Online learning in teacher professional development
+ Support systems for teacher researchers
+ Research community collaboration and
+ Program assessment and evaluation.
-- Examples of the value to the scientific community of involving teachers in research
-- Recommendations for designing and implementing research experiences that align with national, state, and/or local reform efforts in science education
-- The framework for conceptual learning in terms of the curricula and embedded research activities

Presentations on new or ongoing successful models for long and short-term teacher research experiences are invited from the fields of space science, environmental science, atmospheric science, earth science, oceanography, etc. Scientist-teacher research teams are particularly encouraged to submit abstracts for the session. Printed and CD-based materials may be brought by participants to the session to be distributed to attendees.