Harvard College Observatory proposes to create teacher training videos and workshop materials which will help science teachers understand and cope with misconceptions in science. Building on a body of research which has been done in this area, a series of teacher-training video tapes will be developed and made available to teachers on a nation wide basis. Six 28-minute tapes will address misconceptions in the fields of biology, chemistry, earth science, engineering, mathematics, and physics. An additional set of six 30-minute workshop tapes will contain sample student and teacher interviews and samples of both effective and ineffective teaching methods, and will be accompanied by activity books. A panel of six teachers with a background in misconception research will serve in summer workshops as an advisory group in the development of the materials. The video tape series and workshop materials will be derived from the work pioneered in Project Star; the tapes will be an extension of the pilot video, A Private Universe. There is a cost-sharing is 37% of the amount requested from NSF.
