A plan is just a plan until you see it in action. When the SCALE science immersion unit hit prime time at an elementary school in Madison two years ago, no one knew what the results would be. Cathy Hunt, a kindergarten teacher at Mendota Elementary School who just finished teaching the unit for the third time, has a pretty good idea now how it works.

Learning how to ride a bicycle is a joyful experience most of us remember. Perhaps it was a parent or older sibling who first held the bike while you tried to pedal without falling. It may have taken several times over consecutive days before you got the hang of it, then the guiding hands were dropped and suddenly you seemed to fly.

The 2005 Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Learning Network Conference will be held on January 31 and February 1, 2005, at the Capital Hilton Hotel. The meeting will convene Principal Investigators and other representatives from all Comprehensive, Targeted and Institute Partnerships (CTI) and from Research, Evaluation and Technical Assistance (RETA) projects. The theme is Challenging Courses and Curricula, one of the five MSP key features and one that is critical for realizing the goals of the MSP program.

Lead staff of each of the MSPs met in Washington from January 28th-January 31st 2004. SCALE members' presentations included:

Andy Porter

The Relationship Between Student Learning and High-Stakes Assessments

This report of the SCALE Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Case Studies line of work provides preliminary findings about SCALE activities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison).

These videos require

On November 10, 2006, the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education (ITP) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, sponsored a panel discussion entitled, “Who Needs Education Research? Perspectives from the ‘Consumer’ Side.” The participants explored the practical value of education research for school districts. Specifically they addressed the usefulness and practical barriers to research as well as the importance of establishing productive relationships with researchers. The individual panel video portions include the introduction by Adam Gamoran and panel speakers Norma Baker, Lisa Wachtel, and Steve Kailin:

One major component of SCALE’s work is the development of Immersion Units and the accompanying professional development for teachers. The units are a coherent series of lessons designed to guide students in developing deep conceptual understanding that is aligned with the standards and key concepts in science. Further, Immersion Units are intended to build a learning culture in the classroom and sustain students' enthusiasm while they learn rigorous science content.

In the Los Angeles basin, SCALE formed a strategic partnership with the California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) through the Quality Educator Development (QED) project and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to develop this vision. These videos are a record of that ongoing collaborative development process, professional development for teachers, and implementation of science immersion units in the classroom.