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Stephen Witzig

faculty

Stephen Witzig, PhD

Associate Professor

Education

Contact

508-910-9030

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Balsam Hall 9178

Education

2012University of MissouriPhD in Science Education

Teaching

Programs

Teaching

Online and Continuing Education Courses

A content course designed to address the Massachusetts Physical Science Curriculum Standards for middle school science instruction. This highly interactive course emphasizes research-based core instructional models to provide teachers with effective content and pedagogy to integrate topics such as the properties and reactions of matter, as well as the relationships between matter and energy, into the middle school science classroom.
Register for this course.

Research

Research awards

  • $ 599,926 awarded by National Science Foundation for Connecting Undergraduates to Biodiversity Instruction through Citizen Science (CUBICS)
  • $ 13,000 awarded by Lloyd Center for the Environment, Inc. for Lloyd Center-STEM Education PhD Fellowship Program

Research

Research interests

  • Development of teachers’ specialized knowledge for teaching science
  • Socioscientific issues based education
  • Informal science contexts & field based teaching/learning
  • Scientific practices & formative assessment in science

Select publications

  • Sickel, A. J. & Witzig, S. B., (Eds.) (2017).
    Designing and teaching the secondary science methods course: An international perspective

  • Witzig, S. B., Halverson, K. L., Siegel, M. A., & Freyermuth, S. K. (2013).
    The interface of opinion, evaluation, and understanding while learning about a socioscientific issue
    International Journal of Science Education, 35(15), 2483-2507.
  • Witzig, S. B., Freyermuth, S. K., Siegel, M. A., Izci, K., & Pires, J. C. (2013).
    Is DNA alive? A study of conceptual change through targeted instruction
    Research in Science Education, 43(4), 1361-1375.

Dr. Witzig holds a Ph.D. in Science Education from the University of Missouri. He joined the UMass Dartmouth faculty in 2012 and teaches courses in both the Ph.D. program in STEM Education as well in the Masters of Arts in Teaching programs. Stephen’s research focuses on the development of teachers’ specialized knowledge for teaching science, scientific practices, and bridging research relationships among scientists, classroom teachers, and science teacher educators. His work focuses on the sources of teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge, how experience shapes knowledge, socioscientific issues based education, qualitative methods in science education, and areas of student learning including the roles of students and teachers in learning science. He has published his work in the International Journal of Science Education, Research in Science Education, Journal of College Science Teaching, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, among others and has a co-edited book entitled Designing and Teaching the Secondary Science Methods Course: An International Perspective.