8.1MB - College of Education - Auburn University

e s e a rc h & o u t r e ach
Federal grant extends reach of
problem-based learning project
Dr. John Saye wants social studies teachers to challenge their
students to do more than remember names, places and dates.
Saye has visited enough classrooms to know that K-12 students
are far more likely to remember those details when they are challenged
to think critically about the challenges historical figures
faced. In his capacity as co-director of the Persistent Issues in History
Network, Saye encourages educators to develop problem-based
learning strategies.
For instance, if a class happens to be studying the American
Revolution or the Civil Rights Movement, a teacher could stimulate
student discussion by posing the following question: When are
citizens justified in disobeying established authority?
“Kids don’t like social studies,” said Saye, a professor
of social science education in the College
of Education’s Department of Curriculum and
Teaching. “They see it as memorizing names
and dates. Problem-based learning presents
the subject to kids in a way that real people are
involved. We ask them to deal with questions
that people have had to deal with throughout time.
“They learn a lot more deeply and retain more that way.”
With the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education,
Saye and colleagues at Indiana University and New Mexico State
University will look for ways to help teachers use new technological
tools for problem-based learning. The total funding for the project,
entitled “PBL-TECH: Using Web 2.0 Tools and Resources to Support
Problem-Based Curricular Innovations in Pre-Service Teacher
Education,’’ is $749,853 for three years. Saye’s share of the overall
award is $150,791.
Saye and his partners — Dr. Thomas Brush, associate dean for
teacher education and associate professor of Instructional Systems
Technology at Indiana University’s School of Education and Dr.
Krista Glazewski, associate professor of Learning Technologies at
New Mexico State University — believe educators will engage students
more effectively by using interactive technology.
“I think things like Twitter offer a lot of possibilities,” Saye said.
“In social studies, in the real world, Twitter has had a dramatic
impact on politics and in coordinating social protest. We know our
students are using those kinds of things. That’s a big part of the first
step of this project is to do some conceptualization of what tools exist
now. What can we recommend to teachers and teacher educators
as the most promising tools available now?”
Saye said he and his colleagues hope the project will inspire
more universities to develop problem-based learning models for
teacher education and, ultimately, integrate those same approaches
in K-12 school systems. If that happens, more students may come to
view their social studies classes differently.
“We’re talking about students wrestling with dilemmas that
people in that place and time [in history] wrestled with,” Saye
said. “Those are the issues they are going to struggle with as adults
because those questions continue to be raised in contemporary
contexts.”
Investigating the roots of childhood obesity in Alabama
A $74,982 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation will make it possible for researchers
in the Department of Kinesiology to assess the
effectiveness of physical education policies in
Alabama’s Black Belt region.
Drs. Leah Robinson (bottom photo) and Danielle
Wadsworth (top photo) earned the funding
for their project, “School Reform: The Role
of School and Physical Education Policy on
Children’s Physical Activity in Alabama’s Black
Belt Region,’’ which will examine the effects
of the Alabama Board of Education’s mandate
that schools provide daily physical education
by a certified instructor. They will gather data from six elementary
schools in the Macon County School District.
In addition to identifying school policies designed to increase
students’ physical activity, the researchers will learn how school
administrators and physical education teachers meet state-mandated
policies and discover what factors help or hinder implementation of
policies by the school district.
Robinson and Wadsworth have engaged in research exploring
the connection between children’s activity levels and childhood
obesity. Nearly 36 percent of Alabama’s school-aged children are
classified as overweight, compared to 30.6 percent nationally. Nearly
half of all black children in rural Alabama are overweight or obese,
compared to 34.8 percent of white children.
Current recommendations state that children ages 5 to 18 should
engage in at least an hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity
each day. A 2009 study by Action for Healthy Kids determined 70
percent of Alabama’s school-age children fail to meet the daily recommendation
for physical activity.
A K e y s t o n e i n B u i l d i n g a B e t t e r F u t u r e f o r A l l 3 3