Excellence in Teaching Mathematics and Science: Research and Practice

FIRST SYMPOSIUM

Power Point Presentation: Dylan Wiliam's plenary

Abstracts for all Plenary and Break-out Sessions

Program

Friday, January 26, 2007
University of Illinois at Chicago
Center for the Study of Learning, Instruction, and Teacher Development

Plenary Session Speakers:

Richard Duschl
Professor of Science Education at Rutgers University.

Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty, Dr. Duschle chaired Science Education at King's College London, and prior to that was Professor of Science Education at Vanderbilt University. One focus of his research examines how the history and philosophy of science can be applied to science education. The research agenda is to better understand the social and cognitive dynamics for making science classrooms inquiry and epistemic communities. Scientific inquiry, then, is seen as fundamentally focusing on the evidence and the argumentation discourse processes that lead to scientific decisions. A second focus of his research is the design of instructional sequences that promote assessment for learning. With NSF support from several grants, this research has led to many new ideas about how formative assessment strategies can help learners and teachers make scientific thinking visible. He also has expertise in informal science education and in earth science education. Respected among scholars in science education and learning domains, Duschl publishes widely in U.S. and international journals on inquiry, science teaching, learning, cognition, and assessment.  Dr. Duschl has served as editor of Science Education and was a member of the NRC committee that wrote the Inquiry Addendum for the National Science Education Standards. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park.

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Dylan Wiliam
Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, University of London

After a first degree in mathematics and physics, and one year teaching in a private school, Dr. Wiliam taught in inner-city schools for seven years, during which time he earned further degrees in mathematics and mathematics education.  In 1984 he joined Chelsea College, University of London, which later became part of King's College London. During this time he worked on developing innovative assessment schemes in mathematics before taking over the leadership of the mathematics teacher education program at King’s.  Between 1989 and 1991 he was the Academic Coordinator of the Consortium for Assessment and Testing in Schools, which developed a variety of statutory and non-statutory assessments for the national curriculum of England and Wales.  After his return to King’s, he completed his PhD, addressing some of the technical issues thrown up by the adoption of a system of age-independent criterion-referenced levels of attainment in the national curriculum of England and Wales.  From 1996 to 2001 he was the Dean and Head of the School of Education at King’s College London, and from 2001 to 2003, he served as Assistant Principal of the College. In 2003 he moved to the USA, as Senior Research Director of the Learning and Teaching Research Center at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ.

His recent work has focused on the use of assessment to support learning  (sometimes called formative assessment). He was the co-author, with Paul Black of a major review of the research evidence on formative assessment published in 1998 and has subsequently worked with many groups of teachers, in both the UK and the USA, on developing formative assessment practices.

SECOND SYMPOSIUM: 

Friday, March 23, 2007
Northwestern University

Plenary Session Speakers:

THIRD SYMPOSIUM

Friday, May 4, 2007
William Rainey Harper College

Plenary Session Speakers:

Donald J. Wink
Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago

Dr. Wink is professor and former head in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Prior to this, he was an assistant professor at New York University engaged in research in theoretical, synthetic, and applied organometallic chemistry. Since his initial faculty position (1992) at UIC as coordinator of general chemistry, he has engaged in several materials and curriculum development projects. His current projects are diverse but share a theme of crossing boundaries, often using student pathways as a source of inspiration and direction. This includes much work in conjunction with community college faculty, such as his participation in an NSF Undergraduate Research Center project at the Center for Authentic Science Practice in Education. In the late 1990s he began to work with teachers and K-12 classrooms in similar outreach and collaboration projects. This has included work with colleagues in education and STEM departments on an NSF-funded graduate fellows in K–12 education project and the development of a set of integrated natural science courses for preelementary education majors. He is also working on the “Inquiry to Build Content” project in the Chicago Public Schools, a comprehensive curriculum and professional design effort in conjunction with Loyola University. He serves as secretary and councilor for the Division of Chemical Education for the American Chemical Society, as codirector of the UIC ASCEND project, and as the director of undergraduate studies for UIC Chemistry.