Award-Winning Science Educator Anton Lawson to Speak at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Nationally recognized science educator and cognitive researcher Dr. Anton Lawson will present the lecture “Promotion and Evaluation of Reformed Instruction in College Science and Mathematics” at The University of Alabama on Tuesday, April 29, at 12:30 p.m. in room 125 ten Hoor Hall on the UA campus.

The event is free and open to the public. Attendees may bring their lunches.

Lawson will discuss the results of a large-scale curriculum reform effort underway at Arizona State University, where he serves as a professor of biology, which has improved teacher effectiveness and student achievement in the sciences and mathematics.

Entitled the Arizona Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers, the effort is funded by the National Science Foundation and has developed a series of measures of active learning, which can be applied in a wide variety of teaching settings. Lawson will give evaluative data from five courses that are part of the reform effort at ASU.

“Results suggest that the teaching reforms lead to substantial improvements in student achievement. More recent results suggest that undergraduates that become secondary science and math teachers teach in a more reformed manner and their students exhibited improved achievement as a result,” said Lawson.

Lawson’s research focuses on the nature and development of scientific thinking patterns in students. Major interests involve determination of factors that influence the development of these thinking patterns during childhood and adolescence, and determination of their relationship to each other and to scientific concept acquisition. The goal is to develop and test theories of the development of thinking patterns and develop neurological models of cognition.

Lawson received the 1981 award for Outstanding Science Educator of the Year from the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science.

He also earned the 1986 award Distinguished Contributions to Science Education Research from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching and was honored with the Journal of Research in Science Teaching Award three times by the National Association for Research in Science Teaching.

The event is sponsored by the Office of the Dean, in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division with more than 35 departments and programs, 6,600 students, and 350 faculty members.