There is great power in math; most students just don’t know how
to harness it.
“Most students have no understanding about how useful math can be
to them. Too often, they see math as a challenge, rather than an
opportunity,” said Matt Wallace, a PhD student in math education.
Math taught well serves as a “bridge” from a subject often
dreaded to one that empowers students to think conceptually and
more deeply about the role math plays in a variety of fields,
according to Wallace.
The Geology and Physics departments at UC Davis, in collaboration
with the School of Education, received two recent grants to
strengthen the campus’s ability to prepare more desperately
needed math and science teachers for California.
The California Afterschool Network, housed in the School’s CRESS
Center, is launching a new initiative: “Advancing California’s
Capacity to Leverage Out of School Time Systems to Deliver
High-Impact STEM Programming.” With support from the Bechtel
Foundation and the Noyce Foundation, the initiative will lay the
groundwork to create and implement a robust statewide system that
can deliver high-quality STEM experiences during out-of-school
time to more than one million students in California and support
the 40,000 out-of-school-time professionals who serve them.
Professor Rebecca Ambrose received a four-year grant for $525,000
from the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) to
strengthen mathematics teaching and learning in an elementary
school district in North Sacramento.
In an era of public skepticism about science and high-stakes
decisions based on it, involving more non-scientists in research
projects can boost public acceptance, understanding and the
quality of the scientific results, a study co-authored by a UC
Davis researcher suggests.
Cynthia Carter Ching, an expert on technology and education,
represented the K-12 perspective at “Computers & Writing
2009: Ubiquitous and Sustainable Computing,” a conference hosted
at UC Davis during the summer 2009.
