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|  | From PSSC to MSTe: A Personal 34-Year Odyssey in Science and
Engineering Education (continued) 2nd Decade [1967-1976]: The ECCP Years Preparing myself to teach “The Man-Made World”[TMMW] was much more difficult than my earlier experience of getting ready to teach the PSSC course. Besides learning a new body of knowledge, I also had to learn how to use analog and digital computers. But the hard work was very worthwhile because for the first time in my teaching career my students and I were engaged in analyzing and solving real world problems that required application of science and math concepts. Our understanding of physics and calculus concepts was internalized as we modeled the behavior of physical systems using analog computers. In 1968, I obtained a leave of absence from Brooklyn Technical High School to work as a part-time staff associate at ECCP headquarters and was admitted to Teacher’s College of Columbia University to start taking courses toward an Ed.D degree in science education. Earlier, I had obtained the MS in Physics via a three-year (1963-65) NSF sponsored sequential summer institute. At Teacher’s College, my doctoral thesis focused on the role and effectiveness of computer simulation for helping high school students to better understand the behavior of physical systems. Thus, I was able to obtain two graduate degrees because of my involvement in two NSF sponsored projects. From 1967 to 1971, I helped to refine the ECCP course that had many innovative features. The ECCP curriculum was unique in many ways and about 20 years ahead of other curriculum reform efforts. In the 1990's, many of the current MST curriculum projects have adopted a constructivist learning model. Twenty-five years ago, many of the ECCP laboratory activities engaged students in explorations of microworlds using analog computers, logic circuit boards, and computer simulations written in BASIC. TMMW was also unique in that a primary design criterion was that “less is more.” Project 2061 and other contemporary educational reform groups in the past ten years have also adopted the “less is more” approach. TMMW focused on major engineering concepts such as design and decision-making, modeling, systems analysis, and optimization. For five years, after the publication of TMMW in 1971, hundreds of
teachers attended summer institutes and in-service workshops to
prepare themselves to teach the course. One of the biggest mistakes
that was made in the mid-1970's was for NSF to discontinue funding
for summer workshops. For ECCP it meant that significant numbers
of teachers could not be trained. Since very few high school teachers
had background in engineering studies, the ECCP program stopped
growing and peaked with an annual enrollment of about 100,000
students. The obvious lesson is that we must budget for continued
professional development of teachers. 3rd Decade [1977-1986]: The STS Years In 1972, the ECCP project headquarters moved from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn to SUNY at Stonybrook. The project director, Dr. John G. Truxal had become the Dean of Engineering and the ECCP staff joined him at StonyBrook University to create a Program in Technology and Society [PTS]. During the next five years, PTS faculty and staff designed a set of new courses for undergraduate and graduate students that focused on the interaction of Science, Technology, and Society [STS]. By 1977, we were teaching hundreds of college students per semester. Thus, a new Department of Technology and Society was created that offered two minors for undergraduate students and a MS in Applied Science for graduate students. During the late 1970s, when NSF funding for science and engineering education became available again, I was awarded a NSF grant to develop a set of STIM [Socio-Technological Instructional Modules] curriculum materials designed for use in STS courses. Each of the eight STIM units consisted of a student reading and an Instructor’s Guide that provided suggested student activities and projects. In 1980, I conducted NSF Chautauqua-type short courses to introduce college faculty to the STIM materials. From 1978-1984, we also developed applied science and mathematics curriculum materials that used the STS approach to provide interest for under-represented minority students and to encourage them to continue their study of science and mathematics subjects. With funding from the Sloan Foundation, we developed a set of curriculum materials designed for use in high school science and mathematics courses in regional programs that were addressing the under-representation problem. I spent my 1981-82 sabbatical year working as a visiting professor of the MESA [Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement] program in California. During the mid-1980s the STS approach to science education was
adopted by many secondary schools and some colleges. In 1985,
the National Association of Science, Technology, and Society was
created. At about the same time, Drs. Truxal and Visich, faculty in
the Department of Technology and Society received funding from the
Sloan Foundation to launch the New Liberal Arts [NLA] program
that involved faculty members from many of the major colleges and
universities. The NLA books, monographs, and other curriculum
materials are still being used by hundreds of college professors who
are teaching STS-type courses. 4th Decade [1987-97] : Technology Education and the MST
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