Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Learning Sciences and Science Education

The University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education (PennGSE), invites applications for a post-doctoral fellow position in the learning sciences and science education. The position entails work on two federally funded projects with a focus on delivering high quality professional development to high school science teachers.

The first project aims to investigate how high-quality PD can be delivered at low to no cost through a purely online PD format. The content of the PD is computer-supported complex systems resources for high school biology classes using the StarLogo agent-based modeling tool. One major goal of this project is to research the extent to which collaboration and ongoing community-building can be supported through asynchronous methods. 

The second project, in conjunction with Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, will develop curricular units for building bioinformatics literacy that students acquire through investigation of local urban environmental data. Teachers and students will build and use mobile apps to collect this data and will learn how to interpret the data in order to make evidence-based decisions on actions they can take in their communities. 

A successful applicant would have some of the following research experiences or expertise:

• Teacher professional development
• Graphical computer programming (e.g., Scratch, App Inventor)
• Data science or data literacy including data visualization
• Learning analytics
• Qualitative and quantitative research methods (advanced statistical methods is desirable)
• Complex systems and/or social networks (content and methods)
• Urban and science education

This is a one-year position renewable up to 3 years.

The University of Pennsylvania is an equal opportunity affirmative action employer; women and minority candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.