TELS Principal Investigator, Prof. Marcia Linn, has been elected to the National Academy of Education (NAEd). For more details, see the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education press release.

TELS partner school Sequoia Middle School in Pleasant Hill, CA has received a California Distinguished School Award. See the CDE news release for more information.

TELS partners and fellows participate in over 30 sessions at the 2007 American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) annual meetings, among others. See the list of 2007 TELS meeting presentations for more details.

TELS teacher and former fellow Kathy Benemann receives Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education (IISME) lesson plan grant. Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education (IISME) has awarded Kathy a $1,000 grant for her lesson plan for the TELS: Birds of a Feather Evolve Together curriculum module. IISME awards grants to teachers to help them implement a lesson plan they develop. Kathy also participated in IISME's summer internship program. More information about IISME can found at their website: http://www.iisme.org/. Kathy Benemann completed her Masters and Credential in Science and Mathematics Education at UC Berkeley, where she was a TELS fellow. She now teaches at College Park High School in Pleasant Hill, CA.

TELS featured in Science magazine. Click here to view the article featuring advancements by TELS researchers.

TELS in Congress, sponsored by AERA and APA.

TELS partners and fellows participate in over 40 sessions at the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the National Association of Science Teachers (NSTA), and the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) 2006 annual meetings, as well as the 2006 International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS). See the list of TELS presentations for more details.

TELS partner Doug Clark has received a Spencer Foundation Award. The Spencer Foundation provides funding for investigations that promise to yield new knowledge about education in the United States or abroad. Spencer Fellowship programs support educational researchers at different stages of their professional careers, providing resources to both beginning and senior researchers to pursue concentrated intellectual activity. Douglas Clark, a TELS research partner at Arizona State University, will participate in the fellowship program for two years beginning this fall.

The proposed study investigates students' understanding of the scientific concept of "force" in Turkey, China, Korea, Mexico, and the United States. The study will contribute to the resolution of a central controversy among researchers of conceptual change regarding the structure and coherence of students' science knowledge. The study will employ an analytic framework developed through ongoing research at ASU along with two other analytic frameworks representing the predominant theoretical positions in the field. The goal is to apply and extend the analytic framework to provide a topological perspective (i.e., identifying coherence at different levels of behavior) for examining the integration of elemental and theory-like perspectives simultaneously. The study will contribute to this important theoretical debate by integrating multiple levels of analysis, allowing more precise questions to be addressed about the nature of students' knowledge structures. This study will additionally clarify the role of methodological and semantic/cultural differences in the findings of researchers on opposing sides of the controversy. Finally, findings about differences in how students from Mexico and other countries think about science topics like force and motion, in comparison to US English-monolingual students (who are more frequently studied), will inform the development of curricula that better support the underserved diverse student populations in US classrooms.

TELS participant Jully Yi has received a Knowles Science Teaching Foundation Fellowship (KSTF). The KSTF Teaching Fellowship program supports distinguished beginning high school chemistry and physics teachers as they earn a teaching credential and through the early years of their career. KSTF provides financially for fellows through a stipend, professional development, fall and spring meetings, membership in a professional organization, support for a school-site mentor, and grants to support classroom instructional activities.

Aside from receiving financial support, Teaching Fellows are part of a network of outstanding beginning teachers who are grappling with the same issues of teacher preparation and induction. Criteria and indicators used to select fellows for excellence include: Ability and Promise, Science or Mathematics Content Knowledge, Commitment to Teaching, Ability to Teach, and Leadership. This year, Jully Yi was one of 14 fellows chosen from the nation to make up the 2006 KSTF Science Cohort.

Representative George Miller meets with WISE and TELS. Congressman Miller attended Martinez Junior High School. On October 14th, he came to Berkeley and met with 6 students and teacher Priscilla Robinson from his alma mater to hear how science is taught today. As the students said, "With WISE, we learn more and we are more interested in science." Miller has championed innovation in education and fought tirelessly for improved public education.