GSE Partners in New Center on Cognition and Science Instruction

With Penn GSE in the lead, the University of Pennsylvania is partnering in a new center dedicated to improving middle school science education. Called the 21st Century Center for Cognition and Science Instruction, the project has received $10 million in grant support from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences.

The consortium will work with the Commonwealth's Department of Education and nearly 200 Pennsylvania middle schools to better understand how the mind receives, processes, stores, and retrieves knowledge and how to modify middle school science curricula to improve learning outcomes. Working with Penn's Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, GSE researchers will design a major intervention study.

The mission of the Center is to conduct research that informs educators and policymakers and to provide national leadership for the improvement of science curricula.

"The United States could be much stronger in preparing the general population with levels of science knowledge needed for success in the 21st century workplace and in the production of future scientists," said Penn GSE Dean Andy Porter, a co-principal investigator of the center. "It's highly unlikely that the U.S. can continue to produce leading scientists and engineers without providing a stronger science education to our children, particularly in the critical middle-school years."

Other project partners are the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center at Temple University, the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, Research for Better Schools, and the 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education.

Media contact: Jill DiSanto-Haines at 215-898-4820 or jdisanto@upenn.edu