TEACHING & LEARNING
Project Connects Korean Math, Science Educators with UI Researchers
Korean educators engage in research workshops. |
Some of Korea’s brightest and most promising high school teachers of math and the sciences spent three weeks observing the cutting-edge research taking place on campus, as well as new methods for teaching.
Research Participation for Exemplary Science Teachers, as the program is called, was created by the College’s Science Education program, which has emerged as a leader in the United States in spurring science education reform and helping science teachers’ professional growth. Program organizer, Science Education Professor Robert Yager, said, “The program is expected to become a model for similar professional development programs across the country.”
“The visiting teachers acquired research insight of substance that they will use in their teaching back in Korea,” said Mathematics Professor Palle Jorgensen, a project collaborator. “The best thing was how much the visiting teachers were motivated. Their enthusiasm was wonderful.”
Another program collaborator, Environmental Chemistry Associate Professor Larry Weber, agreed. “I was surprised by the Korean educators’ depth of interest,” Weber said. “They were inquisitive and seemed to really get engaged in our modeling research.”
Korean educators reunite with their mentor, Prof. Robert Yager. |
For the past decade, the program has also served groups of Korean science teachers participating in short-term professional development programs with sponsorship from the Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development.
Yager traveled to Korea this fall to meet with the nearly 400 science teachers who have participated in the Iowa projects over the past 11 years. “It was a treat interacting with the teachers and visiting the campuses of past Ph.D. students who are now faculty members at universities around the nation,” he said.
The Korean teachers favorably evaluated the Iowa programs, and several classroom-based research projects showed great effectiveness in improving science teaching and learning in Korean classrooms.
Bringing Civic Education to Bulgaria
Bulgarian girls celebrate St. Cyril Day. |
As a team, Social Studies Education Associate Professor Greg Hamot and Curriculum Professor Peter Hlebowitsh have created a strong reputation for their work in international civics education. Last fall, the two professors completed a six-year civics education curriculum project with Bulgaria.
“The old ideologically driven civics course, which extolled the virtues of the Soviet state and the omnipotence of Marxist-Leninist perspectives, was obviously obsolete,” Hlebowitsh said.
With sights set on making institutional changes in the Bulgarian classrooms by creating new instructional materials, Hlebowitsh and Hamot worked in collaboration with Bulgarian educators to design, publish, and use a new set of civics education curriculum materials from primary to high school. They also developed a national network of in-service programs promoting more general democratic causes in the school by encouraging teachers to think about what it means to teach democratically and by prompting schoolmasters to see their schools as growing fields for democracy.
Hamot says a project covering all grade levels in developing civics education for democracy is almost unheard of in the post-Soviet world. “Our colleagues from the Open Education Center completed a monumental task in doing so,” he said.
As an indicator of the growth of civil society in Bulgaria, the curricula extended beyond the public school classroom to the community via special courses for parents of school children and other adults.
“This sort of civic engagement in education for democracy is a healthy sign that Bulgaria is well on its way to becoming a full-fledged member of the world’s democratic community of nations,” Hamot said.
|