EDUCATION
AAAS Wins NSF Funding for Meeting at UNESCO

AAAS has received a $150,000 grant from NSF to hold an international science education conference at UNESCO headquarters in Paris that will focus on worldwide efforts to strengthen K-12 science and math education.

"It's clear that a lot of us are struggling with the problem of how to reform the entire system of math and science education,” said Shirley Malcom, director of AAAS's Directorate for Education and Human Resources. "We want to look at reform models in which scientists are permanently involved, so we can figure out how scientists can best work with education policy-makers, teachers, and educators in bringing about systemic reform.”

Although a date has not been set for the 3-day conference, the event will take place in Paris sometime in the spring. Its goal is to link the national and international efforts to improve K-12 science and mathematics education and to consider how reform efforts in the United States compare to those under way in other countries, according to Malcom.

"Programs to improve teaching and learning in these fields are being implemented throughout the world,” Malcom said. "Yet, many of these programs exist in a vacuum due to the lack of communication among educators and policy-makers in different countries. Improved communication is needed to share information on effective practice and to identify areas for further research.”

Malcom, who is organizing the meeting with AAAS's International Office, said that scientists have continued to work on international initiatives to improve the teaching of science and mathematics during the 18 years that the U.S. government and UNESCO were estranged.

"At this critical juncture in the U.S. reentry into UNESCO, we see this meeting as an opportunity to forge even closer ties between science, education, and policy at UNESCO,” said Shere Abbott, AAAS's chief international officer.

Malcom noted that the event in Paris will build on the recent thawing in relations between the U.S. government and the U.N. agency, as reflected in the words last year of UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.

"I look forward to the possibility of closer collaboration with the enormous intellectual and cultural resources of the American academic and scientific communities, and fuller contact with the extraordinary cultural diversity that characterizes American life,” Matsuura said in an 11 September press release. "Their energy and ideas are vital in the effort to shape policies that can improve the lives of people everywhere.”

AAAS
Swiss Artist Bridges Worlds of Science and Everyday Life

Swiss artist Max Grüter's work in "My Private Space Program” opened 19 November at AAAS, with an exhibit that takes up the entire first floor gallery of the building at 1200 New York Avenue, N.W. For his first showing in the United States, Grüter has created a mixed-media exhibit that blends science and art in a dreamlike look at space: domestic space as well as outer space.

In a forthcoming book, Bits of Life: Media Studies and Science and Technology Studies, University of California Santa Barbara Professor Lisa Parks has an essay about Grüter, noting that he uses three-dimensional digital imaging techniques to take him beyond "an astronautic aesthetic.”

"In Grüter's virtual playground,” writes Parks, "astronauts are human—they can be seen lounging in the living room watching television, ejecting from their spacecrafts for amusement, or just sitting melancholic, contemplating the passage of time. The playful yet serious atmospheres in Grüter's virtual worlds encourage us to question and evaluate the kinds of activities that space science has undertaken for decades, activities ranging from biological experiments, to moon walking, to spacecraft design. But where NASA spent billions of dollars on space science and its spectacles, Grüter has managed to efficiently create a one- man space institution using nothing more than his lively imagination and a high-end computer in Zürich.”

The AAAS Art of Science and Technology organizes three exhibits a year that "span the range of scientific inquiry,” according to Virginia Stern, director of the program. "The AAAS concept of art is very broad,” said Stern, who is also director of the Project on Science, Technology and Disability for the AAAS Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs. The Grüter show is co-sponsored by the Embassy of Switzerland. The arts program began on a small scale 17 years ago, as a way of raising the quality of the works of art that decorated the walls of the former AAAS headquarters on H Street, N.W.

Viewing hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., at the AAAS building at 1200 New York Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC, and the Grüter exhibit will be open to the public through 1 March 2004. For more information, please e-mail vstern@aaas.org, or call Virginia Stern at 202-326-6672.
–Kelly Gayden