Leadership Support for the Board on Science Education

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With the baseline support provided by this grant, the Board on Science Education (BOSE) of the National Research Council (NRC) will coordinate a series of regular, structured meetings over the next five years between the leadership within the NSF Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and the leadership of units within the NRC that focus on STEM education. These meetings will focus on emerging ideas or pressing issues in science education and science education research. The Mathematical Sciences Education Board of the NRC was disbanded in 2008. This project provides support to re-establish mathematics education expertise within BOSE, reflecting the growing importance of improved practice in mathematics education. A group of six experts in math education research will join regular BOSE meetings. With the inclusion of mathematics expertise this project provides the resources to pursue ideas and issues in a timely manner across the full spectrum of STEM. Providing evidence-based strategies to address deficiencies in science or STEM education is one of the major contributions of projects in the BOSE portfolio. In connecting NRC/BOSE to NSF/EHR, their complementary missions form a context for developing a jointly designed agenda for both investing in research on STEM education and for integrating the findings obtained by the research community. Combining the discovery process supported by NSF and the reflective, interpretive, independent work that can be conveyed in NRC reports and through the convening power of BOSE will advance the relevance and applicability of the national STEM education research agenda in significant ways. This proposal will help to shape the focus of that agenda through greater collaboration and interaction between the networks established by BOSE and the expert advice gathered by NSF through its review panels, regular conferences involving its PIs, and the expertise of its program officers. Results from the last 5-year grant were very productive. For examples, the reputation of BOSE for evidence-based, impartial guidance was instrumental in two recent projects that hold promise for transforming K-12 science education in the United States: A Framework for K-12 Science Education (the blueprint for the Next Generation Science Standards) and a two-report series on successful STEM education that lays out recommendations for improving STEM education and outlines a set of indicators that can be used to monitor progress toward these improvements: Successful K-12 STEM Education (2011), and Monitoring Successful K-12 STEM Education (2013). The 2012 BOSE consensus report - Discipline Based Education Research (2012) - summarized findings from education and learning research in physics, astronomy, chemistry, geo-sciences, the biological sciences, and engineering. It provided recommendations for improving the quality of undergraduate education in these fields that dovetail with major reform initiatives throughout the country.