UW partnership to reinvigorate science education

With the help of the National Science Foundation (NSF), UW–Madison and four Wisconsin school districts have launched a comprehensive initiative to reinvigorate the way science and math are taught and learned at the primary, middle and high school levels.

The new initiative, known as the K-Through-Infinity Professional Development Partnership, is an ambitious effort that seeks to couple a broad array of UW–Madison science, math and science research and education programs with the expertise of K-12 teachers. A primary goal is to train a new generation of faculty, teachers, scientists and other professionals to effectively integrate the process and excitement of scientific discovery with teaching at all levels.

“[The K-Through-Infinity initiative] gives us all the potential to grow and develop in ways that we couldn’t alone.” Robert Gilpatrick Superintendent, Verona Area School District

“The vision is to create a seamless learning network with research as the engine,” says Terry Millar, Graduate School associate dean and a professor of mathematics. “We want to better connect university scientific discovery, and the excitement of that discovery, with K-12 education. This is science education for the 21st century.”

Participants in the project include the Madison Metropolitan School District, the Milwaukee Public Schools, the Verona Area School District and the Monona Grove School District.

The power of this initiative, according to Robert Gilpatrick, superintendent of the Verona Area School District, is the creation of a mechanism through which expertise can flow through all levels of the educational system. Importantly, it emphasizes the expertise and experience of teachers at all levels to enhance opportunities for students to master critical bodies of knowledge.

“It gives us all the potential to grow and develop in ways that we couldn’t alone,” says Gilpatrick.

Lisa Wachtel, science coordinator for the Madison Metropolitan School District, says the promise of the new partnership is in its potential to harness scientific research directly to the K-12 classroom.

“This is an opportunity that gets at the heart of science education: learning science by doing real science,” Wachtel says. “Teachers are eager to collaborate with science researchers in ways that will enhance their students’ abilities to view science as something real and vibrant, and possibly as a career choice.”

The K Through Infinity initiative has four overarching goals:

• Increase the overall scientific literacy of K-12 teachers and students.
• Raise interest in science, math and engineering in K-12 schools, especially among groups underrepresented in science such as women and minorities.
• Educate a cadre of graduate students and selected undergraduates about the process of learning and the needs of the K-12 system.
• Shift the culture of the university to raise the status of education-based initiatives.

In an effort to leverage $1 million in support from NSF, and more than $600,000 in matching support from the Graduate School, the K Through Infinity project will draw on the expertise of more than a score of existing UW–Madison science research and education programs. Partners include the Institute for Chemical Education, the Center for Biology Education, the Engineering Learning Center, the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, and the Pre-College Enrollment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence, among others.

The basic working units of the K Through Infinity project, says Millar, will be teams made up of UW–Madison graduate students, science and engineering faculty, school of education faculty, K-12 master teachers, and K-12 curriculum coordinators, administrators and guidance counselors.

Together, the cooperating teams will develop a series of projects aimed at solving problems or capitalizing on opportunities to enhance the teaching of science, math or engineering by better mining the scientific enterprise and other resources at UW–Madison. For example, web-based distance learning has the potential to transform the way science and math are taught and to provide opportunities for teachers to access materials that might not otherwise be available. One K Through Infinity team will explore issues of developing learning tools and content for the Web that could enhance both the college and K-12 learning environments.

Key players in all of the K-Infinity teams and projects will be graduate and selected undergraduate students from many disciplines who will be awarded fellowships to apprentice with the K Through Infinity teams. The fellows will not only have opportunities to help develop new methods for teaching science, but to apply those methods in the educational trenches — schools and other learning environments.

The fellowship aspect of the program, according to Millar, is to help create a cadre of individuals — whether they become university faculty, primary school teachers, scientists or pursue other careers — who have a better understanding not only of the learning process, but of how research can have a significant impact on education at all levels.

“The way that university researchers view and do science is the most important benefit we can share with students and teachers in the K-12 schools,” Millar says. “The greatest promise of this initiative is the opportunity to provide K-12 students the chance to learn how to do science from the example of the researcher who probes the unknown every day.”