News

Dr. Bill Cobern, Director of the Mallinson Institute, has been elected Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and will be formally inducted as a Fellow at the 2009 annual AERA meeting to be held in San Diego, April 13-17. In 2005, Dr. Cobern was also elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The National Science Foundation has awarded MISE a grant of $460,000 for the following project:

On April 12 Bob Poel presented InterActions in Physical Science:  Helping Students think like a Scientist at the meeting for InterActions Curriculum for the Michigan Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Faculty member Heather Petcovic and MISE doctoral graduate Bob Ruhf
collaborated on a study to appear in the May issue of the Journal of Geoscience Education:

Petcovic, H.L., and Ruhf, R.J., 2008, Geoscience conceptual knowledge of preservice elementary teachers: Results from the Geoscience Concept Inventory: Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 56, p. 251-260.

Congratulations to Dr. Herb Fynewever and MISE alumnus Dr. Ozcan Gulacar who recently presented the following paper(s):

H. Fynewever and O. Gulacar "Role of low-level blocks in student solutions of stoichiometry problems," 235th ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 2008.

H. Fynewever and K. Mirakovits "Evaluating what teachers do outside the classroom," National Science Teachers Association National Conference on Science Education, Boston, MA, March 2008.

Dr. Renee Schwartz recently had the following paper published:

Schwartz, R. S. & Lederman, N. (2008). What scientists say: Scientists’ views of nature of science and relation to science context. International Journal of Science Education, 30(6), 721-771.

Tricha Germinder is one of several BIOS 1700 students who recently presented the results of their ongoing plant investigations projects to her class. Her poster was voted the best poster in her section by her peers. Congratulations Tricha!

Science Education Events at WMU: The Michigan section of the American Association of Physics Teachers will hold its Spring Meeting at WMU on Saturday, April 12.  The keynote speaker is Dr. Sylvester Jim Gates, Director of the Center for Particle and String Theory at the University of Maryland.  The meeting is organized by MISE member and MIAAPT vice-president Dr. Charles Henderson and will include three presentations by MISE faculty and graduate students.

• "Motion matching: a challenge game to generate motion descriptor concepts" Adriana Undreiu, Dr. David Schuster, Betty Adams and Dr. Philip Kaldon
• "From motion diagrams to motion graphs" Dr. David Schuster, Eric Arsznov, Betty Adams and Adriana Undreiu
• "InterActions in physical science: helping students think like a scientist" Dr. Robert Poel
  

Dr. Henderson was a featured presenter at the Action Research and Professional Development in Math, Science and Technology Education Conference in Lissgarden, Sweden on April 2-3. He presented two talks: “Physics Education Research and Research-Based Instructional Strategies”; and “Barriers to Instructional Change”. He also presented a talk titled "Putting Values into Practice" at the Physics Department Colloquium at Göteborg University in Göteborg, Sweden on April 4,