Encouraging new teachers in hands-on learning

The University has been awarded a $2.2 million grant by the National Science Foundation to study the development of elementary and middle school teachers during their transition from college into the classroom.

The funding will be used to examine changes in the teachers' understanding of science and education over a five-year period, according to Deborah E. Allen, UD associate professor of biological sciences and principal investigator for the project.

Research will focus on UD's reform-based curriculum for undergraduate elementary education majors, a group of inquiry-based science and education courses intended to help education majors reshape their understanding of learning. A key goal of the curriculum is to help prospective teachers change from a view that learning is simply the transmission of knowledge through lectures and drills to one that focuses on the creation of knowledge through inquiry-based projects.

The purpose of the grant is to use a cross-disciplinary team of UD faculty, teachers from kindergarten through grade 12, graduate students and undergraduates to study the effects of this innovative curriculum on the students who experience it.