The National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.8 million grant for research led by professor William Sandoval of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSEIS) to bring science teaching up to Next Generation standards,

The four-year study will examine best practices for middle and high school classrooms in collaboration with more than two dozen teacher leaders in the Montebello Unified School District. Sandoval’s research team includes GSEIS colleagues Jody Priselac, associate dean for community programs, and Lynn Kim-John, director of the UCLA Science Project at Center X.

Sandoval said that one of the main changes that Next Generation science standards will entail is replacing “cookbook” experiments with actual scientific inquiry by students. “Science processes – doing experiments and creating models and so forth – have historically been done in a way that is really separate from learning scientific concepts,” he said. “The [new] idea is that kids should make models and do experiments in a way that is very tightly coupled to [this] learning.

"What the Next Generation standards are trying to do is … have kids use the data they get from their experiments to learn the scientific concepts we want them to learn," Sandoval said. "It’s a big change for teachers to focus on practices of experimentation, modeling, arguments, and data analysis … and helping them to understand that is one big job.”

Sandoval heads the Urban Schooling Division at GSEIS; previously, he served as head of the Psychological Studies in Education Division (2007-09 and 2011-12). He received the Bobbie and Mark Greenfield Award for Applied Research in Learning and Achievement in 2010, and the Lois Haytin Award for Outstanding Research on Teaching and Learning in 2008. In 2011, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, and in 2004, he was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Study Committee on High School Science Laboratories: Role & Vision section.

Learn more in the original story published in Ampersand, GSEIS's online magazine.