This award seeks to encourage the development and dissemination of new designs for courses and curricula, new instructional methods or approaches, and other types of innovations in the pre- or in-service education of teachers of science. Manuscripts may deal with practices for the preparation of elementary, middle school, or secondary teachers.  Papers in this category would be suitable for the ASTE journal, Innovations in Science Teacher Education.

Awardees of Award IV will receive a cash award of $500 sponsored by Carolina Biological Supply Company and a tribute in the awards issue of the ASTE Newsletter. Awardees of the Award IV – Graduate Student level will receive conference registration for the conference year in which the award is presented; this award will only be granted to the first author.

The ASTE Awards Committee bases its selection of the award-winning manuscript on the novelty of the innovation, evidence of effectiveness, clarity of communication, research/theory base, possibility for replication/expansion, and response to recognized weaknesses. The submitted manuscript must be blind with respect to the author(s) or affiliation(s). Author(s) should not be identified by name within the manuscript. No headers with the authors’ names or affiliations should appear nor any references to authors or affiliations in the manuscript. If one wishes to list to a reference from one of the authors, list simply as Author 1 (2003), for instance.

Required Documentation

Before submitting your manuscript, ensure that:

• You, the nominator, are an ASTE member
• You, the nominator, are the first author on the manuscript
• All authors are current ASTE members [if any authors on your paper are not ASTE members, please provide an explanation and/or justification for their non-membership]. Non-members are encouraged, and will be provided time, to join ASTE. Plaques will only be provided to ASTE members.
• The manuscript was presented at the previous ASTE International Conference
• The manuscript focuses on the development and dissemination of new designs for courses and curricula, new instructional methods or approaches, and other types of innovations in the pre- or in-service education of teachers of science
• The manuscript submitted for review is blind: All author names and affiliations, including those from headers and references are removed from the manuscript
• The manuscript submitted is in pdf format and less than 1Mb in file size
• You have read the judging criteria for the award
• The manuscript conforms to the submission criteria of the Innovations in Science Teacher Education (manuscripts are no longer than 15 pages long (excluding tables, figures, abstract, & references), the format of manuscripts must be in full compliance with format guidelines presented in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th Edition, and are double-spaced with one-inch margins using 12-point font on standard 8.5 x 11” paper)
• Graduate student authors seeking the graduate student-only level award must upload a letter from any faculty mentor who appears as author to indicate their involvement in the work, which should be kept to a minimum.

Deadline

Materials are due by April 1.