Key Participants
Conference Organizers:
Alicia C. Alonzo is an assistant professor
of science education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University
of Iowa. She earned a Ph.D. in applied physics from the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech) and completed an NSF-funded postdoctoral fellowship in education
at the University of California, Berkeley and worked as a research associate and
lecturer in the School of Education at Stanford University prior to assuming her
current position. She has been involved with the development of learning progressions
and associated assessment items since 2001, resulting in several co-authored papers
(Briggs, Alonzo, Schwab, & Wilson, 2006; Alonzo & Gearhart, 2006; Alonzo & Steedle,
2009). She is a member of the NAEP 2009 Science Standing Committee and served as
a member of the subcommittee charged with incorporating learning progression items
into the 2009 science assessment.
Amelia Wenk Gotwals is an assistant professor
of science education in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.
She received an M.S. in ecology and evolutionary biology and a Ph.D. in science
education from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation work on assessment of
complex reasoning in science was funded in part by a Spencer dissertation fellowship.
Her current research includes work on the NSF-funded
Deep Think: Thinking deeply about biodiversity through inquiry learning
progression project on which she is a co-PI. Her focus on this project is to create,
evaluate, and implement an assessment system to gather principled evidence of students'
learning as they develop deeper understandings of and abilities to reason in biodiversity.
Advisory Board:
Charles W. (Andy) Anderson is Professor
in the Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, where he has
been since receiving his Ph.D. in science education from The University of Texas
at Austin in 1979. Anderson's current research focuses on the development of learning
progressions leading to environmental science literacy for K-12 and college students.
He has used conceptual change and sociocultural research on student learning to
improve classroom science teaching and science teacher education, science curriculum,
and science assessment. Anderson was co-author of
Matter and Molecules, Project 2061's top-rated middle school science
teaching materials. He is past president of the National Association for Research
in Science Teaching and has been co-editor of the
Journal of Research in Science Teaching and associate editor of
Cognition and Instruction. He recently served as a consultant to
the National Research Council's Committee on Test Design for K-12 Science Achievement
and as a member of NRC's Committee on Science Learning, K-8. He served as a member
of the NAEP Science Framework Planning Committee and is currently a member of the
NAEP Science Standing Committee.
Joseph S. Krajcik, a Professor of Science
Education and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Education at the University
of Michigan, works with teachers in science classrooms to bring about sustained
change by creating classroom environments in which students find solutions to important
intellectual questions that subsume essential learning goals and use learning technologies
as productivity tools. He seeks to discover the depth of student learning in such
environments, as well as to explore and find solutions to challenges that teachers
face in enacting such complex instruction. In collaboration with colleagues from
Northwestern University and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, he is a
principal investigator in an NSF-funded materials development project that aims
to design, develop and test the next generation of middle school curriculum materials
to engage students in obtaining deep understandings of science content and practices.
Professor Krajcik co-directs the IDEA Institute and Center for Highly Interactive
Classrooms, Curriculum and Computing in Education (hi-ce) at the University of Michigan
and is a co-principal investigator in the National Center for Learning and Teaching
Nanoscale Science and Engineering. He is a fellow of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science and a past president of the National Association for
Research in Science Teaching. Before obtaining his Ph.D. in Science Education, Joe
taught high school chemistry for seven years in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received
a Ph.D. in Science Education from the University of Iowa in 1986. His home page
is located at: http://www.umich.edu/~krajcik.
His project web sites include: http://hice.org
and http://hice.org/IQWST.
Carol Smith is a Professor in the Department
of Psychology, University of Massachusetts at Boston, where she has been since receiving
her Ph.D. in developmental studies from Harvard University in 1976 and completing
postdoctoral research at M.I.T in 1978. She is a cognitive developmental psychologist
whose work on conceptual change in science education exemplifies part of the research
basis for learning progressions. Over the past 30 years she has studied the conceptual
changes that occur as children develop their ideas about matter as well as their
ideas about scientific models and knowledge construction in science. She has also
collaborated with teachers, scientists, and science educators to create innovative
teaching units for elementary and middle school students and to study their effectiveness
in facilitating conceptual restructuring compared with more traditional teaching
approaches. Most recently, she worked on a team that synthesized current research
in order to propose a long-term learning progression for matter and served on the
NRC's Committee on Science Learning, K-8, which authored
Taking Science to School. She is currently collaborating on two longitudinal
studies, one with elementary school students and the other with college students.
Mark Wilson is a Professor in the Graduate
School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of
the American Psychological Association and founding Editor of the journal
Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives. He recently
gave both the William Angoff Memorial Lecture
(Educational Testing Service) and the Samuel J. Messick
Memorial Lecture (Learning Testing Research Colloquium, University of
Melbourne). His interests in measurement range from reforming the approach to measurement
in education and more broadly, across the social sciences, to innovations in mathematical
and statistical modeling for measurement, to the policy and practical issues involved
in educational and psychological assessment. These interests are founded upon the
core practice of developing concrete assessment and assessment systems for educational
purposes. He has recently published four books that illustrate the breadth of his
expertise. Constructing measures: An item response
modeling approach is an introduction to modern measurement;
Explanatory item response models: A generalized linear and nonlinear approach,
co-authored with Paul De Boeck of the University of Leuven in Belgium), introduces
an overarching framework for the statistical modeling of measurements.
Towards coherence between classroom assessment and accountability is
an edited volume exploring the relationships between large-scale assessment and
classroom-level assessment. He has also recently co-chaired the National Research
Council Committee on Assessment of Science Achievement. Its report, the fourth book, is
entitled Systems for state science assessment.
Strand Leaders:
Alicia C. Alonzo (See biographical information
above)
Derek Briggs is chair of the Research and
Evaluation Methodology Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he
also serves as an assistant professor of quantitative methods and policy analysis.
His research agenda focuses upon building sound methodological approaches for the
valid measurement and evaluation of growth in student achievement. Examples of his
research interests in the area of educational measurement include (1) characterizing
the gap between validity theory and practice in the context of high-stakes standardized
testing, and (2) developing IRT models capable of measuring complex learning trajectories.
Examples of research interests in applied statistics include critical analysis of
the statistical models used to make causal inferences about the effects of teachers,
schools and other educational interventions on the growth of student achievement.
Amelia Wenk Gotwals (See biographical information
above)
Lindsey Mohan is a Research Associate in
the Science Education program in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan
State University. She completed her doctoral degree in Educational Psychology and
Educational Technology from Michigan State University in May 2008 with a dissertation
that explored how exemplary science teachers orchestrate productive discussion that
moves beyond recitation. For the past five years she has been a leader in developing
a carbon cycle learning progression as part of her work on The Environmental Literacy
Project. In this role, she is involved in developing frameworks, assessments, and
curriculum materials that explore how learning progressions can inform science instruction
in K-12 classrooms.
Keynote Speaker:
Richard J. Shavelson is the Margaret Jacks
Professor of Education, Professor of Psychology (courtesy), former I. James Quillen
Dean of the School of Education, and Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the
Environment at Stanford University. He served as president of the American Educational
Research Association; is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological
Association, and the American Psychological Society; and is a Humboldt Fellow (Germany).
His current work includes the assessment of science achievement; the study of formative
assessment in inquiry-based science teaching and its impact on students' knowledge
and performance; the enhancement of women's and minorities' performance in organic
chemistry; and the role of mental models of climate change on sustainability decisions
and behavior. Other work includes studies of computer cognitive training on working
memory, fluid intelligence and science achievement; assessment of undergraduates'
learning with the Collegiate Learning Assessment; accountability in higher education;
the scientific basis of education research; and new standards for measuring students'
science achievement in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the nation's
"report card"). His publications include Statistical
Reasoning for the Behavioral Sciences, Generalizability
Theory: A Primer (with Noreen Webb); Scientific
Research in Education (edited with Lisa Towne); and
The Quest to Assess Learning and Hold Higher Education Accountable
(forthcoming from Stanford University Press).