by Carol Sowers

Four Arizona State University graduate students researching cutting edge techniques to improve science teacher education have been selected to attend the first summer institute sponsored by the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). This national organization has promoted research in science education since 1928, and is offering its first summer institute modeled after programs in Europe.

The four ASU doctoral students, Jonah Firestone, Sissy Wong, Irasema Ortega and Krista L. Adams with the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, “are the next generation of faculty members and attendance at this institute positions them to conduct innovative and important research in science teacher education,” said Julie Luft, professor of science education with the Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education.

Luft, a nationally acclaimed scholar in the field of science education, is one of eight faculty members selected to take part in the summer institute, chosen for her prolific research and publication record, her work in science teacher education, and her commitment to graduate students.   Luft came to ASU in 2005 from the University of Texas at Austin and has focused on science teacher education since her arrival.

The ASU group is the largest attending the June 21-26 institute at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where 24 doctoral students will work with top scholars to hone their research and writing skills on their long journey to complete their dissertations. “We expect them to have research ideas in hand, have data collected, analysis, a pilot study,  and moving on to the next phase of their study,” said Sandra K. Abell, Curators’ Professor of Science Education at the University of Missouri. “Certainly the main thrust is to improve their current research project.”

Like her colleagues, Ortega said she welcomes the high-powered help.  She is beginning her dissertation which explores how science is taught to English Language Learners. “The institute,” she said “will help me focus my research question and develop my writing style. Ultimately, I will have a strong dissertation because of this institute,” she said

Luft said attendance at the prestigious institute will impress universities looking for outstanding science educators. “Our students will be on the job market next year, and the faculty at major universities will consider this an important research activity,” Luft said. “The NARST summer institute will not contribute to already strong resumes, it will help our students understand the research requirements that assistant professors need to negotiate in their first years.”

The University of Missouri summer institute was considered two years ago when Abell and other science educators visited the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA). The institute, which was established in 1995 in Leeds, England, is extremely competitive in Europe. Only a small number of the graduate students who apply are selected to attend. “When we learned that ESERA ran a summer school for doctoral students,” Abell said. “We knew a good thing when we saw it, and decided to implement this in the United States.”

Firestone, Ortega, Wong, and Adams have different research interests. But they share a lifelong passion for science.  And as former K-12 teachers, they understand the challenges and joys of teaching science.

 “I’ve always known I was going to be a teacher,” Krista Adams said, adding that nearly every relative from grandparents, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles and brother-in-law have been in the classroom. In addition, Adams was always “good at science.” Adams was drawn to chemistry, which required additional work on her part.

Upon graduating with a degree, Adams worked in industry doing drug testing, and spent nine years teaching science in middle school and community college in her home state of Kentucky.  In 2005 she qualified as a National Board Certified Teacher. A year later, she became interested in science teacher education and typed the words “curriculum and science education” into her web browser. “Every single Web site referred to ASU,” she said, adding that the next year she was in Tempe enrolled in the science education program focusing on chemistry instruction.

Adams’ dissertation will explore the content knowledge of beginning secondary chemistry teachers and the type of assistance they receive from experienced science teachers in their first years.  “Most schools provide new teachers support, but we want the support to be science specific. My goal is to understand how science and non-science support impact the content knowledge of a teacher,” she said. The results of her dissertation will ultimately help school districts support their new content specialists.

Firestone, who graduated from Tempe High School, had far different ideas about his career when he came to ASU. An experienced professional actor, he majored for awhile in theater arts; sampled architecture, but tired of staying up till 4 a.m. drafting. Still, he has a wide range of interests and degrees. He finally identified science as an area of interest and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology, a well-rounded science that includes elements of chemistry, physics, and biology.

He taught science in a Gilbert high school, where he said, “I became more interested in how teachers learn and teach science and decided to return to graduate school.” ASU was a natural location for him, as he was in the valley and his former Master’s advisor (Luft) was now at ASU.

His dissertation focuses on how teacher certification methods affect science instruction. He is comparing an alternative program that puts science majors in the classroom while they work toward certification to a more traditional route that requires teachers to get a bachelor’s degree and certification through a master’s program.“I am trying to see if the alternative program is equivalent, and whether they teach differently and how,” he said. His dissertation will help science teacher educators understand how to support teachers who are from different certification pathways.

Long romanced by science, Ortega was born in Madison, Wisconsin, but grew up in her parents homeland of Venezuela. “My father nurtured that curiosity for science,” she said. She returned to the United States at the age of 19 to begin her undergraduate study in the discipline.
    
Ortega attended the Florida Institute of Technology, where she majored in marine biology and graduated with a master’s degree in science education. When she started college, her English was weak, and she was required to enroll in English as a Second Language classes. “I had no immersion,” she said, “I was surrounded by English speakers and this was how I learned the language.”

After 18 years in the Phoenix Unified High School District and Mesa Unified School District, Ortega decided to build her skills as a science teacher educator. This desire brought her to ASU to study the teaching of science to ELL students. Her dissertation will look at the vocabulary, writing and science that occurs in the classrooms of new teachers. This research will help science teacher educators in their preparation and support of new teachers; who are most likely to work with ELL students.

Now an aspiring professor in science education, Wong once envisioned a career as a veterinarian.
She earned a bachelor of science in zoology and minored in chemistry, graduating in 2000 from Northern Arizona University. But after working for veterinarians, she started looking for other careers. She landed a summer job teaching life science at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott. It was her first experience teaching she said, “and I was hooked.”

As she gained more experience in teaching in informal settings, she began to realize that, “I wanted to couple my passion for science with education.” She found a position teaching high school biology and chemistry, and earned her master’s degree in secondary education while teaching. She decided to continue her education and enrolled in ASU’s science education doctoral program because “it was the most intriguing to me.”

Her dissertation will probe beginning science teachers' beliefs and practices to see how they relate to their decisions to leave or remain in the field  Wong is focusing on new science teaches’ beliefs, including what they think should happen in a classroom. Researchers say their beliefs are a “guiding force for decisions made in the classroom,” she said. When this is coupled with a “high attrition rate,” Wong said “science teacher educators can begin to explore why some teachers leave the profession and others persist.

Luft and the four students will leave in mid-June for the NARST Summer Institute. Their travel is supported in part by Earl A. and Lenore H. Tripke Professional Workshop Travel Award, Tripke fellowships, Luft’s Research Incentive Funds, and the National Science Foundation grant on which they work as research assistants.