Research in science education takes place within several different communities, with studies at younger grades typically conducted by people with backgrounds in cognitive psychology and education, and studies at higher levels by people with backgrounds in science disciplines. Recent work suggests the need for close contact between these efforts, as the field moves toward understanding how children's intellectual resources, such as their knowledge of everyday phenomena and their abilities for abstraction, argumentation, and analogy, are nascent forms of what they will need for success at higher levels.
This project is producing scholars with strong backgrounds in both the natural sciences and in the learning sciences, who conduct research on learning and development over the full range of ages, from the seeds of scientific reasoning in childhood through disciplinary expertise as adults. The program is a collaboration among science and education departments at the University of Maryland in College Park, including Physics, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Cell Biology & Molecular Genetics, along with Curriculum & Instruction. Five graduate students are supported for five years to achieve masters-level expertise in a science discipline and pursue coursework and complete dissertations in science education research. The program prepares them to 1) collaborate with educational and developmental psychologists and with discipline-based science education researchers on issues that cut across ages, and 2) to develop and teach courses that break down the traditional barriers between science teaching methods courses and science content courses for teachers.
Strong backgrounds in both science and the learning sciences prepare program graduates to serve as leaders in research on learning and teaching from K-18, as well as in the development of curriculum, materials, and methods to help students build and refine their knowledge and abilities from one year to the next.
