Faculty/ Research Spotlight - Dr. ann rivet, ph. d., science education program, nsf grant

My name is Ann Rivet, I’m an associate professor of Science Education here at Teachers College. I grew up in New Hampshire, so I grew up in New Hampshire; I went to school in Rhode Island. There are two main areas that I teach in the program, the first is the Earth Science content specialist in the program, so I teach the Concepts in Earth science which is a pedagogical content knowledge class for those who want to become Earth Science teachers, or those who have an interest in Earth Science learning. And I also teach some of the course seminars in the advance masters and doctoral program particularly around curriculum pedagogy and learning, and some advance methods. I really enjoy teaching the course seminar, which is curriculum and pedagogy in Science Ed. It’s one of the first seminar courses that the advanced doctoral students take, or advanced masters and doctoral students take and it’s a great course because it addresses both the history of science education and the core theories around learning and how our understanding of learning has changed and what impact that has had on the way we teach and the way that we design instructional materials. And so it runs the history from the 1850s to 2010/2012 and it does, it really, it’s a seminar so it’s very discussion based the students all take turns leading class. And it gives them a chance to explore both individually and together what the interplay between learning and teaching. Broadly I’m really interested in how students learn science and in particular how students learn Earth Science. I work a lot with urban populations, I did work previously in Detroit, I do work in Harlem and the Bronx here as well as other areas of New York. We have a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation myself and I have a co PI, her name is Dr. Kim Kastens she is an oceanographer that works at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia, who has a strong interest in geoscience learning and thinking. And the focus of that project is to look at the ways in which Earth Science teachers in New York 8th and 9th graders, 8th and 9th grade Earth Science teachers use models, physical representations of concepts in their class, and how students understand how that model works, such as a model of deposition, or the model of the causes of the seasons, with a lamp and a ball moving around it and what they understand about the model and how that relates to how they really understand the full Earth system. We are using an analogical mapping framework where you look at, can students recognize correspondences to non-correspondences of the objects in the model to the objects in the Earth system to their configuration in motion and at the causation of the phenomena level as well so causation… what making that model works the way it does is the same thing that is making the Earth system work the way that it does. We’re assessing that sort of baseline that was our first year; we then work with the teachers around improving instructional strategies that better cue students to think about the relationships between the model and the actual real Earth system itself. And we’re testing that now, so the teachers are implementing a series of instructional strategies that we’ve developed in order to better support this and we’re analyzing both the impact it has on the instruction in the classroom that we are observing and on their performance on the assessment measures we are using. I have two full time doctoral students that are working with me, so they’re in the classrooms doing the videotaping, we are interviewing students about their responses, and they’re conducting the pre-post test measures. So we’re in the process right now of analyzing all the data we’re going to describe what the teachers did before, and describe how it’s different this year and we’re going compare student performance from year 1 to year 2. TC is a great place. I’m constantly amazed at the opportunities that I have and that students have coming here and being able to work at both an institution like Teachers College and all of it’s history and all of its prestige, and being in New York. And surrounded by all the cultural institutions and all the newest ideas and newest innovations and everybody come here to do new stuff. And I continually get involved. The best thing about TC really are the students. And they are inquisitive and they are knowledgeable and they work so hard and they are always pushing me to think about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it and to make my teaching better and to push my research in new directions; the students I have involved on my research project are invaluable in terms of thinking about new ways of reframing the problem or issues or experiences that they’ve had that I’ve never thought of before. We have such a wide variety, wide range of expertise and faculty so anything that you want to know the expertise is here and that’s an asset both for me and for my students. I’m actively involved in the National Association for Research and Science Teaching. I have, I just stepped down from the board for on the editorial board for Journal for Research and Science Teaching, which is the journal associated with that. I’ve been attending NARST for gosh 10 years, 12 years. It’s a great organization, I attend and present regularly at the American Educational Research Association. Actually my dissertation won an honorable mention award from AERA. I’m on the editorial board for the Journal of Learning Sciences and actively involved in the International Society for Learning Sciences. And I also regularly present at NSTA, which is the National Science Teachers Association. I love doing collaborative work and making new connections.