Integrating Research & Education: Contemporary Research in the Education of Teachers

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Kansas State University (KSU) has been selected as one of ten recipients of the National Science Foundation's Recognition Awards for the Integration of Research and Education. KSU has distinguished itself through its efforts to integrate research experiences with faculty and discovery-based learning into the undergraduate education of future K-12 teachers and the post-graduate development of inservice K-12 teachers. Innovative courses for current and future teachers have been developed through collaborations between faculty in science departments and the College of Education. Science and education faculty also collaborated in providing a capstone research experience for elementary education students. Through these collaborations, faculty and students in the College of Education are enriched by involvement in cutting edge research and members of the science faculty learn the results of the latest research on learning and teaching. The products of these collaborations include innovative new courses in genetics and quantum physics as well as a heightened awareness of pedagogy among science faculty. This will facilitate a wider conversion of science and engineering courses to the discovery-based approach. The university's vision is to expand this approach to all students. The university's efforts to integrate research and education were designed with specific outcomes in mind: increasing the science content knowledge of K-12 teachers; increasing the confidence level of current and future K-12 teachers in their ability to learn and teach science; improving the performance of student teachers in their first classroom teaching experience; and publishing research papers documenting the initiatives and their results. The university has documented noteworthy success in achieving these goals. The university is being awarded $500,000 with the goal of expanding, documenting, and disseminating its exemplary practices over the coming three years. Plans for the use of the award funds include: establishing the KSU Program for Integrating Education and Research dedicated to expanding faculty participation in integration activities; documenting the process used to create new courses; creating and presenting workshops at professional society meetings and other universities to highlight this approach; creating multimedia versions of the workshop for distribution on CD-ROM and through the World Wide Web; and developing new research-based introductory science and engineering courses and courses for teachers in other science and engineering disciplines.