Though a relatively young board, BOSE has completed various influential studies. Findings and recommendations from America’s Lab Report have informed proposed legislation to address the deficiencies in high school laboratories in the United States. Moreover, the National Science Teachers Association has developed a new position statement on science laboratories based on the report.
Taking Science to School, published in 2007, has been growing in its influence on science education. This report brings together research literatures from cognitive and developmental psychology, science education, and the history and philosophy of science to synthesize what is known about how children in grades K through 8 learn the ideas and practices of science. This report redefines what it means to be proficient in science and reviews the most current research on young children’s capacity to engage in science. This report offers science education an unprecedented infusion of knowledge that is central to the intersection of learning and science.
In line with the board’s deep commitment to making study reports more accessible to a broad audience of science education practitioners, BOSE has developed, with sponsorship from the Merck Institute for Science Education, a practitioner’s version of Taking Science to School. This practitioner book, titled Ready, Set, Science! Putting Research to Work in K-8 Science Classrooms, links the research-based findings from the formal volume to the realities of classrooms and schools so as to make them accessible to a range of science education practitioners including curriculum developers, teacher leaders in science education, professional development experts, and assessment experts. We plan to develop a similar volume based on the study of learning science in informal settings.
BOSE has also engaged in two major studies of the education programs within federal science agencies. NASA’s Elementary and Secondary Education Program: Review and Critique, published in December 2008, includes recommendations to improve design, implementation, and evaluation of the agency’s elementary and secondary education projects. The board has begun a similar consensus study reviewing NOAA’s education programs.
The board’s current portfolio of work also includes a large-scale synthesis of research on learning science within informal environments as well as a collaborative project with the National Academy on Engineering to evaluate pre-college engineering curriculum.
In addition, BOSE convenes public workshops and expert meetings to explore current topics in science education. Examples include a workshop on Information and Communication Technology Fluency and High Schools, a workshop on Mathematical and Scientific Development in Early Childhood and an expert meeting on evaluating inquiry-based approaches to science education.
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