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In 2012, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City launched the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) Urban Residency Program. The AMNH recruits Earth science majors from across the United States who are motivated to teach in high-need schools in New York State. Developing a teacher preparation program from scratch is a tall order, and the museum is learning a tremendous amount from its pilot effort.

Kinzler, R. & Macdonald, M. (2014, January-February). Preparing new science teachers for high-need schools. Dimensions Magazine, 27.

This article describes a museum-based urban teacher-residency (UTR) program's approach to building subject-specific content knowledge and research experience in Earth Science teacher candidates. In the museum-based program, graduate-level science courses and research experiences are designed and implemented specifically for the UTR by active Earth and Space research scientists that account for almost half of the program's faculty.

Informal science education institutions play an important in the public understanding of science and, because of this are well-positioned to positively impact science teacher education. Informal science institutions (ISIs) have a range of affordances that could contribute to learner-centered science teacher identity development. This article describes research from a clinical experience in a museum where teacher candidates engaged visitors in learning dialogs around objects on a moveable cart in an exhibit.

This chapter examines the affordances of museum resources in informal settings and how they shape science teacher identity. More specifically, this chapter discusses how residents learning how to teach in school settings leverage experiences of learning to teach in museum settings. 

Gupta, P., Trowbridge, C., & Macdonald, M. (2016). Breaking dichotomies: Learning to be a teacher of science in formal and informal settings. In L. Avraamidou & W. M. Roth (Eds.), Intersections of formal and informal science (pp. 178-188).New York, NY: Routledge.

To make sense of the Common Core State Standards mathematical practice (MP) 8, this article illustrates what “repeated reasoning” means, why looking for and expressing regularity in it is such a valuable mathematical habit of mind, and how that differs from analyzing structure (MP 7) and from finding patterns in numerical results. 

Get them talking: Your formula for bringing math concepts to life!

Mathematics standards in the United States describe communication as an essential part of mathematics. One outlet for communication is writing. To understand the mathematics writing of students, we conducted a synthesis to evaluate empirical research about mathematics writing. We identified 29 studies that included a mathematics-writing assessment, intervention, or survey for students in 1st through 12th grade. All studies were published between 1991 and 2015.