"Listening to the River" (LTTR) is a watershed science education project funded by the National Science Foundation. The project aims to deliver watershed education experiences in and around Traverse City, Michigan, and also to develop a model that can be replicated in other locations. Inverness Research was contracted by the "Listening to the…

The digital age has transformed how work is done in science, health care, the law, journalism, international relations, education, environmental conservation, agriculture, and engineering. To prepare students to thrive in today's society, teachers need to know more about how technologies are used in disciplines and workplaces, and--most…

The Exploratorium is home to XTech, a science education program which began in 2006 and was primarily funded by a three-year National Science Foundation grant (Award # 05-25217) through its ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) initiative. XTech provided project-based afterschool activities in science, engineering,…

The Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) is a project within NSF's (National Science Foundation's) Math Science Partnerships (MSP) initiative. Funded at $23 million over five years, the AMSP involved 51 school districts and nine higher education institutions in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The AMSP faced two significant challenges in…

The papers presented in this paper accompany a core report about the Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) entitled "The Appalachian Math Science Partnership: A Multi-State Umbrella Partnership Promoting Local Mathematics and Science Reform Report." Each of them focuses on an especially effective strategy or component of the AMSP umbrella…

This paper defines the concept of "improvement infrastructure" and "educational capital" for education, and it uses the case of the National Writing Project to develop an extended, data-based illustration of the design and generativeness of an improvement infrastructure. Since 1983 there have been multiple "waves" of educational reform that have…

The New Teacher Alliance is a major, multi-year initiative of Washington's Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession (CSTP). It aims to build capacity within participating districts and ESDs (Educational Service Districts), and eventually across Washington state, to provide high quality supports that lead to effective induction of new…

This module provides a set of quantitative snapshots of the Community Science Workshops (CSWs) to complement the other reports that comprise the CSW Evaluation Portfolio--the Description of CSWs, the Benefits to Youth, and the Evaluation Brief modules--and to build a solid representation of the scope and scale of the CSW's work and…

This module presents the range of benefits youths receive from their participation in Community Science Workshops (CSWs)--from personal, to social, to academic and how these benefits reveal the core values of the CSWs in action. The multi-year evaluation of the CSW program included site visits to multiple Community Science Workshop sites around…

Inverness Research Associates served as external evaluators for the Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) from its inception in 2002 as a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Center for Learning and Teaching. One of the programs that CILS developed was the Informal Learning Certificate (ILC) for informal science educators (mostly…

In 1998, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) launched an ambitious effort to create on-line science courses for K-12 educators that would immerse them in exciting science topics and give them access to the Museum's scientific resources (scientists, research, expeditions, collections, and exhibitions). This project, called Seminars on…

Beginning in September, 2001 when the Portland Public Schools received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Urban Systemic Program (USP) initiative, the district focused, accelerated and strengthened its efforts to improve mathematics and science education K-12. Since its inception the authors at Inverness Research…

In the 1990s, the nation's educational focus turned to troubled schools in the nation's poorest cities. Under the leadership of Luther Williams, then Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Urban Systemic Initiative was created to improve the teaching and learning of science and mathematics. Recognizing that high-needs…

Through their visits and conversations with students, teachers, and administrators involved in the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) over the past decade, the people at Inverness Research Associates came to believe that ARSI served as an important leadership capacity-building effort for improving mathematics and science education in…

The mission of the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) was to build a long-term capacity that would improve the educational structures of the rural communities it served. The major strategy ARSI used to create improvement communities across Appalachia was to identify, embrace and educate individual teachers, who became ARSI Teacher…