Tag Archives: Fulbright

ESERA 2019

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In August, the I was fortunate to attend the 2019 annual meeting of the European Science Educational Research Association (ESERA), held in Bologna, Italy. The conference provided a wonderful opportunity to be part of a PISA-focused session, organized by Jonathan Osborne, to present results of work associated with my Fulbright in Germany. It was also great to see doctoral student Florian Böschl, who works with Prof. Dr. Kim Lange-Schubert at the University of Leipzig, present work from his summer in Nebraska (2018) as part of our ongoing collaborative research on modeling in elementary science classrooms. ESERA was a truly fantastic way to cap off a year of travel and professional work in Germany.

Böschl, F., Lange-Schubert, K., & Forbes, C. T. (2019, August). Investigating scientific modeling practices in primary science: A comparative study of the U.S. and Germany. Paper presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) 2019, Bologna, Italy.

Forbes, C.T., Neumann, K., Schipe-Tiska, A. (2019, August). Science teaching and learning: Analysis of PISA data from the United States and Germany.  Paper presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) 2019, Bologna, Italy.

 

ESERA Summer School 2019

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As part of my Fulbright stay in Germany this summer, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in the European Science Education Research Association‘s 2019 summer school for graduate students. Held June 4-9 in Crete, Greece, the summer school brought together nearly 50 doctoral students and 20 faculty mentors from around the world to support graduate-level science education research. During the event, I gave an invited plenary talk on results of Fulbright-supported PISA-focused research and served as a faculty mentor. The event was highly engaging and presented an outstanding opportunity to learn about and advance high-quality science education research focused on many different topics spanning grade levels and disciplinary domains. It was great work with faculty colleagues from across Europe in service of the goals and mission of this annual event. Kudos to Dimitris Stavrou, Professor of Science Education at the Department of Primary Education, University of Crete, and Chair of the organizing committee, for putting together a productive program and offering Crete as an amazing site for the summer school!

Invited grad colloquium in Cyprus

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This past weekend, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to travel from Kiel, Germany to Nicosia, Cyprus at the invitation of colleagues in the School of Humanities, Social, and Education Sciences at the European University-Cyprus. Each spring, the Department of Education Sciences holds day-long colloquium for Ph.D. students with a focus on enhancing their education research skills and sharing international perspectives on education research. I had the pleasure of presenting and facilitating a working session on the role of theory in education research. My presentation, entitled, “Theory in Education Research: The Reciprocity of Scholarly Thought and Action”, focused on some foundational ideas about the reciprocal relationship between theory and empirical research. As part of the session, students used examples from current CliMES project and PISA analyses to explore these ideas through concrete examples. This was an engaging ‘value-added’ opportunity made possible by my Fulbright and really fun to think explicitly about some of these aspects of our scholarly work that become increasingly internalized over time. Many thanks to Prof. Loucas Louca for the invitation to make the quick trip to Cyprus.

Fulbright Research Trip to Kiel, Germany

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This past week I traveled to Kiel, Germany, to begin work on my Fulbright-related research.  This work focuses on data from the 2015 administration of the The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), in which 28 million 15-year-old (secondary) students in 72 countries completed the PISA.  In 2015, the focus of the PISA was science, with approximately half of the assessment devoted to science items. We are exploring observed relationships between student achievement as related to scientific literacy outcomes and reported instructional practices of high school science teachers.  A special thanks to Knut Nuemann for hosting me at the IPN Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Kiel and to and Anja Schiepe-Tiska, from the Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), for traveling to Kiel for a few days to work with us.  I very much look forward to the ongoing collaboration on this important work.

2018-2019 Fulbright U.S. Scholar

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I am delighted and honored to have been named a 2018-2019 Fulbright Scholar.  Through the generous support of a Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant, I will travel to Germany in the upcoming 2 years to collaborate with researchers at the IPN Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Kiel and the Centre for International Student Assessment (ZIB) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, to conduct analyses on data from the 2015 administration of the The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). As an integrated research/teaching project, I will not only have the opportunity to conduct PISA-focused research, but also engage in graduate and undergraduate teaching at one or both institutions.  This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, both professional and personal, and I am grateful for the support of the Fulbright Program and the German-American Fulbright Commission.  A special thanks to Knut Nuemann and Anja Schiepe-Tiska, as well as colleagues and administrators at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for paving the way for me to pursue this work.