Training and Technical Assistance

Initiated in collaboration with Children’s Hospital Boston, PERCS is an educational program for house staff, medical residents, nurses, and allied health professionals focused on improving communication and relationship-building skills with children and families. The one-day workshop includes interviewing of simulated patients, video feedback, personal and professional debriefing, and didactic presentations in pediatric palliative care and communication principles. This workshop continues to be offered on a monthly basis, and has been attended by over 150 practitioners.

The Connecticut Pre-K Assessment Pilot is a grant-funded project from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation that will test the efficacy of a technology-based early childhood assessment platform. The pilot program will evaluate the usefulness of a handheld assessment device to generate data that is instructionally beneficial to pre-K teachers and can be aggregated for different stakeholders to examine the overall effectiveness of literacy based programmatic investments.

Supported Literacy for Adolescents is a research-based literacy program developed over 10 years by EDC, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education (Office of Special education Programs and Institute of Educational Sciences), Annenberg Foundation, and MetLife Foundation. Its goal is to improve reading, writing, and comprehension among both high risk and typically achieving populations. It is deeply rooted in standards-based curriculum design, and all components of the program are aligned with national reading and writing standards, as well as selected content standards.

At this three-day institute teachers will learn about the science of building structures, how materials and design influence structural stability, and what young children might learn about building strong stable structures. Through hands-on exploration, discussion, and video analysis they will gain new understanding of how to set-up the block area for science learning and how to support children’s scientific inquiry. Participants will all receive Building Structures with Young Children, a guide developed at EDC, to teaching science through block play.

The success of the Teacher Quality Research Project in West Virginia led to this new project. The state Department of Education has contracted with us for LEEP to be taught eight times in parts of the state that have not had the benefit of the Teacher Quality grant. This year EDC’s Ingrid Chalufour will teach LEEP in Wyoming and McDowell counties in southern West Virginia, working with a co-instructor from the WV Department of Education.

Project LEADER is an Early Reading First grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This three-year project will provide an intensive professional development program in early childhood literacy for staff in Lowell’s Community Teamwork Inc. program. The program includes credit-bearing courses in language and literacy, use of formative assessments to inform instruction and science; in addition, teachers will receive instructional coaching throughout the program.

The Center for Science Education is working with the Massachusetts State Science and Engineering Fair to help design and develop a sustainable, scalable model of teacher professional development in inquiry-based learning. The goal of the six-day course is to enable middle and high school teachers to enhance their science curricula with inquiry-based lessons that will help students develop science literacy and acquire workplace skills such as critical thinking, communication, teamwork, and perseverance.

CSE is providing technical assistance and guidance to the Portland, Oregon, Science Resource Team and the Elementary Science Leadership Team in their quest to develop and provide a high-quality, cost-effective professional development program for science teachers in grades pre K–5 surrounding the new science standards with a literacy emphasis. CSE is also providing technical assistance to the Science Resource Team to design and implement professional development for middle school and high school science teachers.