Brief Description:

This project places an emphasis on science teaching and learning in preschool settings with four objectives: 1) Extend to preschool education (3-5 year olds) fundamental knowledge of the relationship between growth of students' conceptual science understanding and their language developments through a systematic teaching approach called Project See What Happens (SWH) that will embed and integrate literacy instruction in the context of active inquiry-based science learning; 2) Investigate the impact of varying lengths of participation in the proposed professional development program on teachers' knowledge, beliefs, intentions and practices with respect to effectively developing science and literacy learning through integrated science and language instruction; 3) Examine the differential impact of varying levels of change in teachers' science and literacy pedagogies on preschool children’s developing understandings of science content, reasoning, literacy and language skills; and 4) Investigate a model, including exploration of barriers and possible solutions, of how to improve science teaching and literacy practices among preschool education teachers by providing professional development on integrating science and literacy teaching with the SWH approach.

Publications

Scientific Concepts, Multiple Modalities, and Young Children. In Hand, B., Prain, V., & McDermott, M. (Eds.), Using Multimodal Representations to Support Learning in the Science Classroom. (pp. 97-116). Dordrecht: Springer
Authors: Deb Linebarger and Lori Norton Meier

Integrating science and literacy for young English learners: A pilot study. NYS TESOL Journal. 2(1), 3-16.
Authors: Yulia Ardasheva, Lori Norton Meier, Tom Tretter, Sherri Brown.

"So my grandpa knows what way to drive the tractor:" Children engage rural ways of knowing. In Whitmore, K. & Meyer, R. Reclaiming Writing. (pp. 193-196). New York, NY: Routledge.
Author: Lori Norton Meier

Examining teacher actions supportive of cross-disciplinary science and literacy development among elementary students. International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 1(1), 43-55.
Authors: Lori Norton Meier, Brian Hand, Yulia Ardasheva

Singing in science: Writing and recording student lyrics to express learning. Journal for Learning through the Arts, 5(1). Retrieved from: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/65w7t155
Authors: Sara Nelson and Lori Norton Meier