Public lecture by Professor Marcia C. Linn, one of the world’s leading educational scientists

On 7 November, one of the best-known researchers in the field of science education, Professor Marcia C. Linn, will hold a public lecture for everyone interested in learning and teaching science, modern technological solutions, and social justice.

Marcia C. Linn is a Professor of Instructional Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Linn earned her PhD at Stanford University, supervised by Lee Cronbach, and worked in Jean Piaget’s research group in Geneva for a year. She has authored numerous influential articles and books on education and is the creator of the web-based inquiry science environment WISE.

Her lecture “Designing instruction to promote integrated understanding of science and social justice” and the subsequent discussion will focus on web-based science units created based on knowledge integration pedagogy. The units have been designed by classroom teachers, learning scientists and computer scientists of the research team at the University of California, Berkeley, and are intended for middle and high school students.

Using an example of a unit on climate change, this talk reports on localizing the instruction to highlight implications for asthma in the community as well as localizing instruction to highlight implications for urban heat islands. For both localizations, teachers customized the instruction based on their students’ experiences, ideas, and interests. These units required students and teachers to grapple have issues of discrimination.

Classroom research demonstrated the value of emphasizing the knowledge integration design principles. For example, supporting students to distinguish among their intuitive ideas and classroom science ideas about particulate matter pollution strengthened understanding.

The lecture takes place on Tuesday, 7 November, from 15 to 17 in the Institute of Education (Jakobi 5, room 115/116). Coffee and refreshments are served before and after the event. Register for the lecture by 31 October.

Lecturers, teachers, doctoral students, students and others interested are welcome to attend.