TERC History
TERC’s commitment to improving education reaches back to 1965 when Arthur Nelson and Edward Van Dusen established the organization. Nelson, a lawyer and businessman with a background in physics, had worked as a research assistant in the Radar Laboratory at MIT during the second World War. There he had, in fact, been one of the first people to track an airplane with radar, a feat he accomplished standing atop a roof at MIT, beaming the radar off a plane flying overhead by moving the equipment by hand. The MIT Radar Laboratory left Nelson with three indelible impressions: first, that difficult objectives could be accomplished given an intensity of effort; second, that the success of large technological undertakings depended upon skilled support personnel, technicians, and other paraprofessionals; and third, admiration for the educational culture of MIT whose motto is mens et manus — mind and hand.
These impressions were still etched in Nelson's memory twenty years later when he met Van Dusen who was then Executive Vice President of the Wentworth Institute of Technology, a technical education college with a hands-on orientation. Van Dusen shared Nelson's vision of a non-profit research center to develop high quality instructional materials for training a new population of specialized technicians. Together they founded TERC.
The year of TERC's birth, 1965, came eight years after the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik. The launch had stunned the American educational community and inadvertently set in motion large-scale federal funding of efforts to improve high school science education. Driving this massive educational reform was an intent to recapture the technological cutting edge by creating more physicists and engineers. Nelson and Van Dusen, by contrast, observed that educational research and development were ignoring an area of primary importance to national economic and social health, namely the training of skilled workers essential to support sophisticated, rapidly changing, technology dependent enterprises. Accordingly, during its early years, TERC focused on various aspects of technical and occupational education, primarily at the postsecondary level. At that time, many of the philosophical underpinnings that guide TERC today were put firmly in place: dedication to public service; determination to make its programs accessible to all, including disabled and educationally disadvantaged individuals; emphasis on working with teachers in actual classroom and lab settings; confidence in the educational power of "hands-on" experience. Furthermore, TERC's unique projects immediately established it as an imaginative, assertive organization, identifying and defining problems rather than merely responding to those already described by others.
In the early 1970s TERC successfully initiated a series of projects that marked a transition from technical education to science education. These resulted in the design of science-based curriculum modules with explicit hands-on content. At the same time, TERC studied ways of accommodating physically handicapped students in secondary schools and community colleges, which led to enduring commitments in the areas of special needs, equity, and access, as well as deep expertise in research and evaluation. TERC's priority on closing the achievement gap began with its strong record for improving guidance, instruction, and occupational programs for women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.
During the late 1970s TERC was a leader in recognizing the potential of microcomputer technology to revolutionize science education. TERC developed a classroom package of instruments and software for collecting, analyzing, and displaying data. Nationally known as the Microcomputer-based Laboratories (MBL), this package offered an array of new tools and approaches to science education and eventually was licensed and sold by IBM. Continuing research delved into children’s learning of graphical representations, data, and statistics and led to a new line of work in mathematics teaching and learning. TERC opened a new era in producing innovative mathematics curriculum materials, including advanced technology tools such as Tabletop, first distributed by Broderbund. In 1990, TERC’s leadership in mathematics research and curriculum design led to National Science Foundation support for Investigations in Number, Data, and Space, a comprehensive elementary mathematics curriculum, published by Scott Foresman.
Classroom telecommunication was virtually unknown in the mid-1980s when TERC first introduced classroom computers to link teachers, students, and scientists in large scale, national and global data collection and problem solving efforts. A 1986 National Science Foundation grant enabled TERC and the National Geographic Society to collaborate in combining telecommunications technology with a carefully structured, hands-on science curriculum. The result was the award-winning NGS Kids Network. Network science continued to flourish at TERC through such benchmark projects as Star Schools, Labnet, and Global Lab. The research on its effectiveness also led to a major publication, Network Science, A Decade Later by Alan Feldman, Cliff Konold, and Bob Coulter, which takes a critical look at these early technology experiments in classrooms and schools.
In recent years, TERC has broadened its scope of work to include the development and implementation of visualization tools in educational contexts, particularly in teaching and learning of Earth and space sciences. At the same time it has a strong commitment to research on online learning, including assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes. TERC is also invested in content development for online programs through such programs as Leveraging Learning, Mars Quest Online, and Science Online: Science in Education Master’s Degree Program, a collaboration with Lesley University. These programsinclude evaluation and research.
Accomplishments
Among TERC's many milestone accomplishments of national significance are:
- Microcomputer-based Labs (MBL)
- With a 1984 grant from the National Science Foundation, TERC launched a five-year nationwide network of teacher workshops with which to demonstrate the MBL hardware, software, sensors, and curriculum materials. By 1990 more than 12,000 units were in circulation. This popular MBL program was unique in providing teachers and students with a powerful analytical tool with which to measure, record, and graph the data generated though scientific inquiry and experimentation. Equipping students and teachers with the ability to display and manipulate student-generated data, MBL fostered enhanced problem-solving skills and enriched scientific learning in countless classrooms.
- NGS Kids Network
- TERC's NGS Kids Network was launched in 1989 in collaboration with the National Geographic Society, and funded in part by the National Science Foundation. This innovative telecommunications-based science program (grades 3-9) provided teachers with software, curriculum units, classroom materials, and equipment kits, which linked classrooms across the nation in collaborative, hands-on, project-based investigations. TERC also developed teacher-enhancement materials for master-teacher trainers and workshop leaders. NGS Kids Network remains a pioneer model for science learning that demonstrates exemplary use of technology by creating communities of classrooms working together on original, inquiry-based science investigations. NGS Kids Network received over twenty awards and citations including: ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award, Innovation Collection (1997); Parents' Choice Honors, Computer Software (1996); ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award, Finalist (1994); and Massachusetts Columbus Quincentennial Award, Finalist (1992), Celebrate Discovery. TERC's Leveraging Learning project is currently developing a new generation of curriculum materials based on the original NGS Kids Network program.
- Investigations in Number, Data, and Space
- A comprehensive, activity-based, K-5 mathematics curriculum, Investigations in Number, Data, and Space was funded by the National Science Foundation. Over the last decade, this ground breaking and highly successful program has become a nationally recognized model for reform mathematics curriculum. Investigations in Number, Data, and Space is currently used in over 700 school systems and 2,700 elementary schools nationwide. The curriculum offers students meaningful mathematical problems, emphasizes depth in mathematical thinking, communicates mathematics content and pedagogy to teachers, and aims to widely expand the pool of mathematically literate students. Since its initial publication, TERC has supported the implementation of the curriculum by providing ongoing teacher professional development workshops in various locations across the country. Over 6,000 teachers have been reached in the last three years and more than 70,000 teacher contact hours of professional development were produced last year. In 2000, TERC's EMPower project for adapting Investigations to an underserved population of adult learners was funded by the National Science Foundation. In 2001 TERC received a grant from the National Science Foundation to support a major revision of Investigations.