January 11, 2005 -- Alumni may be most familiar with the Department of
Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education because it is the home of Curry’s renowned teacher education program. This article, the latest in a series on the school’s newer faculty members, introduces five scholars who, in the words of department chair Dan Hallahan, are “well on their way to becoming Curry’s academic superstars and building its future.”

Randy Bell
Assistant Professor of Science Education

Randy Bell’s experiences teaching science and working as a network administrator
in a remote Oregon school have helped to inform his research agenda at Curry. In addition to exploring the nature of scientific knowledge and how best to teach it to middle- and high-school students, he studies the effects his science-focused educational technology courses have on Curry graduates’ instructional practice.His work is already making an impact. Bell was recently invited to help revise the Virginia Standards of Learning to include content related to the nature of science. The results of two research projects demonstrate that graduates of the Curry Science Education Program are integrating technology and the nature of science into their classroom instruction. Some of Bell’s students have secured science internships with the U.S. Department of Energy and Oak Ridge National Labs, while others have won prestigious fellowships from the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation.

Laura Justice
Assistant Professor, McGuffey Reading Center

Laura Justice is passionate about helping educators determine how best to prepare
young children to read, particularly children with language delays. She holds multidisciplinary appointments in Curry’s McGuffey Reading Center, its Early Childhood Developmental Risk program, and its Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Program in Risk and Prevention. She also directs the Pre-School Language and Literacy Lab, where she is responsible for three federally funded studies related to language and literacy interaction, including a randomized clinical trial of at-risk preschoolers experiencing difficulties with language and reading skills.A member of the Curry faculty since 2000, Justice is a certified speech-language pathologist who has experience working with preschoolers in a university clinic and teaching in an adult literacy program.

When not supervising research projects and mentoring Curry students, she
teaches reading seminars and courses focused on developing literacy and language
in young children.

Paige Pullen
Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education

Paige Pullen and a few colleagues decided it was time to take a fresh approach
to early childhood education. The result of their labors is Curry’s Early Childhood and Developmental Risk program, currently being supported by a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.Now in its second year, the five-year, interdisciplinary program prepares teachers to lead educational programs for children from birth through age eight, including youngsters developing typically and those with disabilities. Graduates earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in education and gain practical experience in a preschool or home-based setting.When not teaching, advising students, or serving as the program’s leader, Pullen focuses on her research interests, which include early literacy development.

Robert Tai
Assistant Professor of Science Education

Robert Tai understands that some elementary school teachers are intimidated by science, and he wants to help them conquer their fears while they are still Curry students. A former high school physics teacher, Tai was attracted to Curry not only by the teaching challenges, but also by exciting prospects for educational research. Since joining the faculty in 2001, he has hit the ground running.He is co-investigator on a National Science Foundation-funded project that explores connections between high school science teaching and later success in college science.He and Curry colleague Rick Brigham are documenting how students’ “attentional allocation”– their pattern of gazing at test questions – varies depending on how well they understand the material on which they’re being tested. Tai’s third project, undertaken with the endorsement of U.Va. chemistry and physics professors, is a study of how students become scientists.

Stephanie van Hover
Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education

Stephanie van Hover knows that people who have memorized a lot of facts
about a subject do not necessarily make good teachers. Those who know how
to bring their subject alive and truly engage students are usually the best educators.

van Hover brings a fascination with what she calls the “beautiful, complex craft” of teaching to her research in the Curry School,where she focuses both on the instructional decisions that educators make and on how statemandated standards and accountability reforms influence those new to the profession.A former seventh-grade geography teacher, van Hover works closely with local schools, placing student teachers in the classrooms and monitoring their work. She also serves as chair and advisor to Curry’s social studies education program.

JAMES COOPER RETIRES
When Commonwealth Professor Jim Cooper

When Commonwealth Professor Jim Cooper came to thecame to the Curry School as dean in 1984, he received a mandate from Edwin Floyd, the University’s provost. Floyd asked him to revamp the school’s teacher education program and to forge a closer relationship between Curry and the College of Arts & Sciences. As he prepares for retirement this fall, Cooper looks back on his 20 years at Curry feeling confident that he has succeeded in reaching both of those original goals.

He did so by convening a faculty task force, charging members with reforming the school’s teacher education program, and chairing the group himself. “It was a huge time commitment,” he says. “We met two hours each week for six months and talked exclusively about how to prepare teachers.”

Under Cooper’s guidance, the task force proposed sweeping changes to Curry’s program. Members recommended doing away with the bachelor’s degree in education for all prospective teachers, except for physical education teachers, and instead requiring students to earn a bachelor’s degree in their academic area of choice from the College of Arts and Sciences and a master’s degree in teaching from Curry.

The five-year program, the first of its kind in the nation to require this preparation of all future educators, is broad-based and comprehensive. Students gain a general liberal arts education; indepth knowledge of the subject they’re planning to teach; exposure to technology and multiculturalism; instruction in how to teach exceptional children; an introduction to pedagogy and the theory of education; and in-school teaching experience.

When it was introduced, Cooper was so confident of the program’s success that he
offered Virginia school superintendents a guarantee: if any Curry graduate they hired wasn’t satisfactory, they could call upon a Curry faculty member to come to the school and bring the teacher up to speed. “I’ve been compared to the Maytag repairman who sits by the phone waiting for it to ring. It almost never did,” he says.

Since stepping down as dean, Cooper has remained active as a leader in developing national educational technology policy. In retirement, he plans to update his three textbooks — Those Who Can, Teach and Kaleidoscope, both in their 10th editions, and Classroom Teaching Skills, now in its seventh edition — and improve his golf game. He leaves his job feeling optimistic about the future of teacher education. “There is a consensus in our field that teacher quality plays the most important role in determining whether or not students learn,” he says. “I’m proud to have played a part in ensuring there are plenty of quality teachers available to educate our next generation of Americans.”