Communities of Educators.

There is a critical estrangement between content experts, education researchers and practitioners. This phenomenon is endemic across America. Progress in math and science education reform is limited by the lack of cooperation among three crucial groups: content researchers studying pure mathematics and science; researchers studying mathematics and science education; and practitioners teaching classes and working with teachers and students at all levels.

Because there is no effective current academic structure, either physical or organizational, to encourage such collaborations, the Center hopes to address this situation by providing just such a structure: physical, organizational, social, and professional. Similarly, although many individual efforts have been made to build alliances between SFSU and other institutions, including K-12 schools, two- and four-year colleges, and industry partners, communication across the COE, COSE, SFSU, and the CSU continues to be difficult.

The College of Science & Engineering has a rich history of such collaborative activities, especially with San Francisco’s public schools and City College of San Francisco. Recent examples include: NSF REAL Project (SFSU and SFUSD), NSF GK-12 (SFSU and SFUSD), NIH Bridges (SFSU and CCSF), NSF MASTEP (SJSU, SFSU and numerous Bay Area Community Colleges), MESA Engineering Program (SFSU, SFUSD and Bay Area Community Colleges), and NSF SF ROCKS (SFSU and SFUSD). However, these activities are not well communicated among SFSU faculty and departments, nor among the partnering institutions. There is often a lack of awareness and understanding of what opportunities are available, what projects are in process, what can be done to continue and extend existing efforts.

Our vision for the Center includes not only communication and dissemination of ideas, but integration of greater partnership and outreach activities into the coursework of the College, thereby not only sustaining initially grant-funded efforts beyond the fund years of the grant, but benefiting and inspiring more students and more teachers to develop further projects in support and extension of work already in action.

Prof. Eric Hsu’s NSF CAREER award project, Online and live communities of teachers, is searching for appropriate ways to use the Internet for teacher professional development and to provide course and support structures for calculus teaching assistants.