Density Curriculum

Acknowledgements

This module was created by Tina Grotzer with Carolyn Houghton, Belinda Basca, Sarah Mittlefehldt, Rebecca Lincoln, and Dorothy MacGillivray. Dorothy MacGillivray and Rebecca Lincoln did the design and extensive editing with contributions from Kiki Donis. David Perkins offered insights on the nature of the causal models that frame all of the Understandings of Consequence Project modules. Sarah Mittlefehldt, Rebecca Lincoln, Kristin Record, and Maritess Panlilio assisted in testing the lessons with students and collecting and analyzing the data. Regina Ritscher helped to analyze students' interviews to assess their understanding. Becky DeVito investigated how teachers in the pilot process carried out the lessons. Carlos Vasco, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, at the National University of Colombia at Bogata, Joseph Snir, Physics Education Professor at the University of Haifa, Israel, and Reed Konsler, who as a doctoral candidate in Chemistry at Harvard University, advised us on matters of science and we thank them for their patience with our many questions and their good humor in finding ways to explain complex concepts so that students can grasp them. We are immensely grateful to Elizabeth Vanderputten and Ken Whang at the National Science Foundation for their support and also to Nora Sabelli, now at SRI, who supported earlier phases of this work. The teachers in the Burlington, MA Public Schools, specifically Rich Carroll, David Thibault, Lucy Morris, and Valorie Tobias, worked with us to test the concepts with their students. We are very grateful to them for their patience and insight. We thank the administration, particularly Dr. Bill Conners, Mr. Richard Connors, Dr. Katie Spinos, and Dr. Jim Piccone for supporting our work. We also thank the many students who shared their thinking with us over the past six years.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. REC-0106988 and REC-9725502 to Tina Grotzer and David Perkins, Co-Principal Investigators. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.