Whether you are exploring the woods near your house, evaluating nutrition labels to choose the healthiest snack, twittering, blogging, or helping your child prepare for college entrance exams, you engage daily with scientific information and technology. Yet our schools do not always emphasize or foster literacy in science and mathematics to the degree that they should, given its growing prevalence in our high-tech world.
The N.C. Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center (SMT Center) seeks to bridge this gap for today’s students and tomorrow’s, and so we partnered with the James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy and the International Center for Leadership in Education to produce the 2009 N.C. Science Summit: Best Practices in STEM Education. Teachers, leaders and policymakers in science and math education will converge in Cary, N.C. on April 19-20 for the second N.C. Science Summit, which seeks to improve, enhance and strengthen STEM education in K-16 grade levels by featuring successful classroom practices, case studies and innovative teaching models.
The Science Summit is designed to reform science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education by effectively preparing science and mathematics teachers, ensuring that all students have access to a highly effective STEM curriculum and providing continuous and content-based professional development for all STEM teachers. This year’s summit will also help educators and policymakers identify innovative and evidence-based solutions to improve STEM education in their schools and districts.
Given the current economic crisis and shifting landscape of the workforce, there is no time more relevant than the present to spotlight STEM education and to ensure that students are better equipped.
“This year’s summit will revolve around issues that are very 21st century in nature, and that have an impact on both education and the economy,” said Sam Houston, CEO and president of the SMT Center. Dr. Houston said that conversations about education often turn into conversations about students being prepared to enter the workforce. And globalization is pushing workforce demand into increasingly technical and science-based sectors, he said.
The SMT Center conceived of the Science Summit in a bid to help drive the discussion of addressing this shift, Dr. Houston said, and to better equip students not only for careers in STEM fields but also for navigating life beyond school in an increasingly complex society. “It’s very important to help with the creation of a system that supports that,” he said.
Judith Rizzo, executive director of the James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy agreed with the link between education and jobs. “We know from data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that some of the fastest growing careers over the next decade will be in STEM fields, and nearly all of those jobs will require at least two years of college-level education,” she said. To meet this need, schools need to ramp up student preparedness. But Rizzo said that teachers and administrators today face a variety of challenges in STEM education, including the need to make science engaging and interesting, as well as imparting why science is important in peoples’ daily lives.
“These challenges are amplified by a shortage of qualified science teachers, a lack of a common STEM curriculum, and a lack of time to access high-quality professional development in science,” Dr. Rizzo said. “At the North Carolina Science Summit, participants will have the chance to hear from their colleagues in successful science-focused schools and districts who have successfully met these challenges in creative ways.” She elaborated that it is critical for students to develop strong analytical, creative thinking and problem-solving skills, which can be developed through stimulating a student’s natural curiosity around science.
But fostering a student’s interest in science and preparing kids for a career in the STEM fields begins many years before college or even high school, according to Bill Daggett, president of the International Center for Leadership in Education, and a keynote speaker at the summit. Dr. Daggett said the middle school years must be targeted to “capture kids’ natural curiosity” in the sciences, and that these are grade levels when teachers and education leaders should focus upon changing traditional methods of teaching science and math, to make them more relevant to students.
The summit also seeks to give educators the tools to tackle STEM education systematically and in a sustained and measurable manner. John Bransford, a professor of education and psychology at the University of Washington, will give a pre-conference talk on measuring learning in ever-changing environments. His discussion will probe assessments of how well students are being prepared to use different resources, including technology, in order to learn to solve complex problems. Additional summit highlights include a talk by former North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt; a presentation by Ray McNulty, senior vice president of the ICLE; a talk on best practices in STEM education by Joyce Winterton, NASA’s assistant administrator for education; a “visual tour” of the Microsoft School of the Future; and presentations by several schools that have successful and proven models for effective practices in teaching STEM.
Dr. Houston said that he and the staff at the SMT Center are excited to witness and experience the exchange of ideas and information at the summit, but said they are especially interested to see the effects translate into real impacts in the classroom. “We believe that summit attendees can easily leave with some things they can go back home and do right away,” Dr. Houston said. “And hopefully they will also build some pretty significant contacts and relationships that will allow them to get some support for in-depth, long range ideas that they’d like to take back home and try out.”
The 2009 Science Summit will take place at the Embassy Suites in Raleigh-Durham/Research Triangle April 19 and 20, with a pre-conference on April 19. (Accommodation information: 201 Harrison Oaks Boulevard; Cary, North Carolina 27513; Phone: (919) 677-1840; www.embassyraleighdurham.com.) For online registration, please visit: www.LeaderEd.com/NCSTEMregister.html.
"It’s going to be a great summit this year, we have a great agenda planned," Dr. Houston said. "We expect a comfortable crowd of 300 to 500 dedicated individuals to turn out."
DeLene Beeland is a freelance science writer based in central North Carolina. She harbors a keen interest for the life and earth sciences, and in fostering public understanding of science.
