Policy Research Initiatives in Science Education (PRISE) to Improve Teaching and Learning in High School Science

This proposal is a request for support for a five-year program for the Policy Research Initiative in Science Education to Improve Teaching and Learning in High School Science (PRISE) at Texas A&M University (TAMU) to use a systems approach to link educational research with policy development. The overarching goal is to provide the State of Texas and the nation with results that will lead to the development of an articulated and coherent system of continuous professional career development that improves the quality of science teaching and makes significant contributions to reducing the current national shortage of qualified high school science teachers. Basically PRISE proposes to answer the essential policy research questions for the high school science teacher professional continuum in Texas: (1) Where are we? (2) Where do we want to go? and (3) how can we get there?