Dr. William Sandoval- Voices of Innovation Series
Our first Voices of Innovation speaker for the Fall 2009 semester will be Dr. William Sandoval, Associate Professor Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. His discussion is entitled Studying Children's Ideas about Scientific Knowledge in Elementary Classrooms. The presentation will take place at the Friday Institute on NC State's Centennial Campus at noon on August 24, 2009 in the Nortel Room.
Science education has taken an epistemological turn over the last two decades, with increasing attention to not just the scientific concepts that children learn, but to the ideas about science and scientific practice that children develop. One consequence of this attention is that it has become clear that we have much to learn about the epistemological ideas children may actually have about knowledge construction, in science or otherwise, and how those ideas affect their science learning. In this talk, Dr. Sandoval will describe a recent study to elicit children's ideas about causal justification, and particularly the role that data play in that. This is part of an ongoing research agenda to construct a theoretical account of epistemological development that can be of use to science educators as they design instruction.
William Sandoval is Associate Professor and Head of the Division of Psychological Studies in Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the UCLA. His interests include the development of scientific epistemologies and their effects on learning and teaching, technological supports for science learning, and design-based research methods in education. His publications span the fields of the learning sciences, science education, and psychology. Dr. Sandoval served on the National Research Council study committee that produced America’s Lab Report (2005). He is co-editor of the design research strand of the Journal of the Learning Sciences, and sits on the editorial boards of Science Education and Cognition & Instruction. He is an active member of AERA, ISLS, and NARST. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico in 1986, and his Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University in 1998.
Please feel free to bring your colleagues and students with you to this seminar. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Dr. Alan Maloney at alan_maloney@ncsu.edu.