Leadership Development Forum
brought to you by the Smithsonian Science Education Center
This year's Forum features two leading researching in science education, Dr. Katherine L. McNeill and Dr. Leema K. Berland. The topic of this year's Forum is Supporting Scientific Practices: K-8 Students Arguing, Explaining, Modeling. Please keep checking back for additional resources posted from both of our speakers.
Speakers
Dr. Katherine L. McNeill is an Associate Professor of Science Education at Boston College. A former middle school science teacher, she received her doctorate in science education from the University of Michigan. She also earned masters in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Michigan as well as her bachelors in biology and English from Brown University. Her research focuses on how to support students with diverse backgrounds in engaging in scientific practices, with a particular focus on scientific explanation and argumentation. Through the generous funding of the National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of NY, she has worked on a number of projects focused on the design of middle school and high school science curriculum and assessments developed to support scientific practices. Currently, she is on the leadership team with colleagues at the Lawrence Hall of Science to design a digital middle school science curriculum that provides teachers with multimedia supports around argumentation. Dr. McNeill has numerous publications around this work including two books, numerous book chapters, and articles in a variety of journals including the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, and The Journal of the Learning Sciences. In 2011, she received the Early Career Research Award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). She has also conducted numerous workshops at the annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and for school districts including the Detroit Public Schools, the Denver Public Schools and the Boston Public Schools.
Dr. Leema K. Berland University of Wisconsin-Madison is an Assistant Professor of Science Education focusing on fostering student engagement in scientific practices of explanation, model construction, and argumentation. She was a lead designer in the NSF funded curriculum development efforts of IQWST and UTeachEngineering. Berland is currently a PI on two NSF projects, and her work is published throughout researcher and practitioner venues in science and engineering education.