PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #47: Education: K-12.
Wednesday, August 7. Presentation from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC

University partnerships for ecological restoration: Enhancing graduate student professional development and k-12 science education.

Hoferer, David^*,1, Scriver, Bryn^*,1, Schell, Jeffrey¹, ¹ University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI

ABSTRACT- Kindergarten-through-Infinity (KTI), a National Science Foundation funded program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is designed to enhance graduate student and k-12 teacher professional development, as well as to enhance inquiry-based science curricula in local schools. In partnership with the UW Center for Biology Education's SchoolYard Science program and the UW Arboretum's Earth Partnership for Schools program, KTI has employed graduate fellows (including the authors) to extend the resources of these programs to local k-12 schools to assist in restoring small areas of native habitat on school grounds and enhance science curricula through student-led investigations of the ecology of these restored areas. Specifically, these partnerships have linked the resources and knowledge of ecology and restoration professionals with the teachers and students of Madison middle schools. This has provided the energy and expertise needed to plan, organise, and implement prairie and forest restoration and reform science curricula that stress ecological concepts through inquiry learning. Inquiry lesson plans, activities, and experiments and corresponding data are being gathered as teacher resources to improve ecology education at all Madison area middle schools. In addition, the graduate fellows have gained experience in communicating scientific concepts to lay audiences, an enhanced understanding of the process of science, and training in teaching theory and pedagogy. These partnerships between university programs and k-12 schools have shown the potential to fulfill the need for k-12 science education reform and enhanced graduate student training.

KEY WORDS: education partnerships, graduate student professional development, inquiry science, Kindergarten-through-Infinity (KTI)