Scott P. McDonald, associate professor of science education at Penn State, has been named recipient of a Fulbright U.S. Scholars Program Award to teach and conduct research at City University in Dublin, Ireland, next fall.
McDonald’s three-month Fulbright assignment begins in September. He will continue working in Dublin for the entire 2012-13 academic year under a yearlong sabbatical. His Fulbright project, "The Cross-Cultural Nature of Professional Pedagogical Vision," will explore the cultural nature of science teaching and how the implicit cultural scripts impact the way beginning teachers analyze science teaching.
“The Fulbright award is an exciting opportunity to extend work that I have done here at Penn State, focused on beginning teachers’ professional vision and seeing how beginning teachers learn how to teach differently in the two cultural contexts," said McDonald. "I will be asking Irish beginning teachers to analyze American science teaching and will reverse that pattern when I return to Penn State in the fall of 2013.”
McDonald is director of the recently opened Krause Innovation Studio in Penn State’s College of Education. He founded the Invisible College for Inquiry Science Study, a researcher–practitioner group of science educators focused broadly on the development of a theory of teaching for inquiry science pedagogy. His current work, funded by the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation Research Fellowship, examines professional pedagogical vision in prospective and practicing science teachers. He makes extensive use of Studiocode, innovative video analysis software, for examining classroom practice both in his research and in his undergraduate and graduate courses.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.