Vol. 19, No. 35

July 6, 2000

Professor honored for her outstanding dissertation

Danielle Ford, education, has received the annual "Outstanding Dissertation" award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching for her doctoral work. The award, presented to Ford at the association's April convention in New Orleans, is given to promote the improvement of science teaching and learning through research. The association, a worldwide organization founded in 1928, "has considerable influence in the U.S. and internationally," Nancy Brickhouse, education and a former association board member, said. "So, this is a very prestigious honor for Danielle." Ford's dissertation involved research conducted at the University of Michigan on innovative ways to use textbooks as a supplement to hands-on experimentation in teaching elementary school science. "The push in science education lately has been on hands-on learning to replace the old, didactic methods," Ford said. "Too often, that has meant throwing out the books altogether. I looked at how we can continue to use texts to support and guide the hands-on work, but use them in a more flexible way." In seeking a middle ground between discovery-based and traditional instruction, she and her colleagues developed new textbooks, designed to resemble scientists' notebooks. The fourth-grade students in the research project began each science lesson with hands-on work and then turned to the textbook to read about a scientist carrying out the same type of project. Ford said the texts support and extend the students' findings and their methods of scientific inquiry. Ford came to UD in September 1999 and teaches science-education methods courses. She earned her bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her master's degree from Brown University, both in geology, and her doctorate in science education from the University of Michigan.