This planning grant seeks to develop a program to improve the teaching of science at the middle and upper elementary school levels. The program will be directed at developing mechanisms for establishing ongoing relationships between faculty in a university research community and teachers in regional schools. During the twelve months planning period approximately 70 teachers from three school districts - Urban School District, Suburban School District, and Rural School District will work together to review and analyze a series of science teaching tapes. Upon completion of this task, the teachers from the various schools in the three school districts will present the tapes to science teachers in a workshop in their respective systems. The reactions and results from the workshops will be used in answering the following questions: What types of written materials for teachers should accompany such a tape? Would a kit with examples of the materials introduced in the unit also be helpful? What is the optimal length of time for such a tape? Upon completion of analysis of the tapes, the curricula of the participating schools will be analyzed. One of the goals of the program will be to establish some commonly agreed upon needs for middle and upper elementary school science programs. This aspect of the program is based on the assumption that every program in science education needs to be updated in response to advances in the fields of science as well as changing societal needs and needs of the various school districts. An outcome of the planning period is the design and development of new teaching units in science that are flexible in structure and format that can be introduced into existing programs without changing the entire science program or without committing the district to new series of books. Teachers can learn how to introduce new teaching material that is limited in scope. The new material and teaching strategies they learn with these units can also be extended to other areas of the curriculum.
