Dr. Kathleen Roth joined BSCS as a Director of the Center for Professional Development in 2009. In her current role as Senior Science Educator, she is involved in the development of a research-based approach to professional development work that will contribute to the field's understanding of science teacher professional development that makes a difference in terms of its effect on student learning. An example of this type of work is the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project, Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis (STeLLA). This scale-up study aims to confirm earlier findings that student learning improves when teachers' professional development experiences included examination of videocases of science teaching that deepened their content and pedagogical content knowledge and improved their teaching practice.

Kathy’s career in education includes seven years as a middle and high school science teacher followed by 15 years as a teacher educator and researcher at Michigan State University (MSU), and 10 years as a researcher with, and then director of, LessonLab Research Institute. Much of her research while at MSU occurred in her role as a teacher-researcher, where she taught elementary school science and studied her own practice and her students' learning. While director of the LessonLab Research Institute, Kathy’s research examined science teaching in other teachers' classrooms, starting with the international TIMSS Video Study of Eighth-Grade Science Teaching and followed by three additional studies: the Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis project (STeLLA), the Videocases for Science Teaching Analysis project (ViSTA), and the Tying Words to Images of Science Teaching project (TWIST). The use of videocases is central in each of these projects, sometimes as a strategy to support preservice or inservice teacher learning and sometimes as a research tool.

Kathy received a B.S. in Biology from Duke University, a M.S. in Secondary Science Teaching from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Science Education from MSU.

Read Kathleen Roth's vitae.