TC Short Takes
Updates on honors, awards and TC people in the news
Paper by Anderson and Student Selected among Year’s Best
A paper published O. Roger Anderson, Professor of Natural Science and Chair of TC’s Department of Math, Science & Technology, and Julie Contino, an Ed.D student in Secondary Science Education, has been selected by the Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE) and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) as one of the top 10 papers published in science education in 2010. The paper, titled "A study of teacher-mediated enhancement of students' organization of Earth science knowledge using web diagrams as a teaching device," will be especially highlighted and recommended for reading in the professional journals published by NSTA this coming year. The original article appeared in the Journal of Science Teacher Education, 21, 683--701.
Contino also serves as Program Coordinator and Professional Development Specialist at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History.
Brooks-Gunn and Ginsburg Elected to NAEd
Faculty members Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Herbert P. Ginsburg have been elected to the National Academy of Education (NAEd). They are among 11 education leaders who were elected to the Academy for their “pioneering efforts in education research and policy development,” the Academy announced.
“The newly elected members are preeminent leaders in their respective areas of educational research, and they have had extraordinary impact on education in the U.S.,” said TC President Susan H. Fuhrman, who is also President of NAEd.
Brooks-Gunn is the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education at Teachers College, where she is co-director of the National Center for Children and Families. She is also a Professor of Pediatrics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and co-director of the Columbia University Institute for Child and Family Policy. Her research focuses on designing and evaluating interventions and policies aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of children living in poverty.
Ginsburg, the Jacob H. Schiff Foundations Professor of Psychology and Education at TC, is a leading researcher on development of mathematical thinking and assessment of cognitive function. Ginsburg, who was named a fellow in the AERA fellow in 2010, contributed to a 2009 National Academy of Sciences study showing that organized mathematics education for young children is both feasible and desirable to provide a sound foundation for later learning and achievement. Ginsburg co-authored “Big Math for Little Kids,” a comprehensive and challenging mathematics curriculum for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children.
Garber Elected VP of the American College of Sports Medicine
Carol Garber, Associate Professor of Movement Sciences and Director, Graduate Program in Applied Physiology, has been elected Vice President of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the foremost international scientific organization in that field. Garber has long been active in ACSM, including as a regional chapter president and member of the Board of Trustees, and has also served as an associate editor and editorial board member of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. Her scholarly work has focused on the role of physical activity in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases; community and clinical interventions to promote physical activity; novel delivery systems for providing clinical exercise physiology interventions; and physical activity and aging.
Riehl Recognized As Outstanding AERA Reviewer
Carolyn Riehl was recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer for the American Educational Research Journal, Section on Social and Institutional Analysis, for 2010. The honor recognizes outstanding professional service rendered to the journals, to AERA, and to education research. AERA journals employ rigorous peer review on all submitted manuscripts, and editors rely on expert peer reviewers to identify the highest quality scholarship for publication.
Sue Profiled in Psychology Journal
The May 2011 issue of The Counseling Psychologist includes a 42-page profile of Derald Wing Sue, Professor of Psychology and Education. Written by Thomas Parham, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Counseling and Health Services and adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, the piece, titled “Derald Wing Sue: From All of the Places We've Been,” details “the personal and professional accomplishments of one of psychology’s most accomplished and prolific scholars” and “affords the reader a rare glimpse into the mindset of a contemporary figure considered by many to be a cultural icon.” Sue is a leading expert on multiculturalism and discrimination issues, and the recent author of Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation (John Wiley and Sons).
Farber Named Editor of In Session
Barry Farber, Professor of Psychology and Education, has been named Editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session, a quarterly branch of the monthly Journal of Clinical Psychology. In Session focuses on the clinical challenges confronting psychotherapists in the form of either a distinct patient population or a therapeutic dilemma. Each issue features original articles illustrated through case reports by seasoned clinicians and informed by research reviews translated into clinical practice. In Session reaches more than 4,000 libraries around the world.
CQ Quarterly Article on School Reform: TC Weighs In
An article in the April 29th issue of CQ Researcher, “School Reform: Should Evaluations of Teachers Rest of Students’ Test Scores?” extensively quotes three TC faculty members and a former TC Cahn Fellow and current New York City Principal. The piece, by Marcia Clemmitt, takes the pulse of leading education scholars and practitioners on market-based ideas for improving schools, including paying teachers based on student performance and creating more publicly funded, privately run charters schools to compete with public institutions.
TC education economist Henry Levin argues that teaching should be more collaborative than competitive, and that teachers “need to talk to the teachers at lower grades about whether they’re teaching” skills on which higher grades’ lessons are based.
Aaron Pallas, Professor of Sociology and Education, contends that while old-style observation evaluations of teachers aren’t very useful, new, data-oriented evaluation systems do not yet offer guidance for improving teaching, either. Pallas suggest that rather than firing teachers, emphasis should be put on improving “how we prepare teachers, both in school and once they get on the job.”
Jeffrey Henig, Professor of Political Science and Education, cautions that the ability of educators’ and education administrators to succeed needs to be seen in context of the situations in which they work: “We have superintendents and principals, for example, who succeed in one school, then go somewhere else and fail. So the question of whether someone is capable or not is way more complex that it may seem on the surface.”
And Ramon Gonzalez, a graduate of TC’s Cahn Fellows Program for Distinguished Principals who is now Principal of the Lab School of Finance and Technology, a middle school in the Bronx, argues that poverty can powerfully skew student success indicators. “I can guarantee you right now that at least 20 percent of our kids need glasses. You can have the best teachers, the best curriculum and the greatest after-school programs in the world, but if your kids can’t see, does it matter?”
Published Friday, Jun. 3, 2011
