Jorgenson, Olaf

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Arizona State University, Ed.D.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, NSTA Press, 1840 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201-3000.

CAREER: Educator, administrator, and writer. Mesa Unified School District, Mesa, AZ, former director of K-12 science, social studies, and world languages; American School, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, former principal; Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Kamuela, HI, headmaster; formerly a teacher and administrator in various American and foreign schools. Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform (LASER) strategic planning institute, National Science Resources Center, faculty member.

MEMBER: Association of Science Materials Centers (president-elect).

WRITINGS:

(With Jackie Cleveland and Rick Vanosdall) Doing Good Science in Middle School: A Practical Guide to Inquiry-Based Instruction, NSTA Press (Arlington, VA), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Although he is now an educational administrator, Olaf Jorgenson spent several years as a classroom science teacher. In Doing Good Science in Middle School: A Practical Guide to Inquiry-Based Instruction, Jorgenson and two other experienced teachers—Jackie Cleveland, a former Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Teaching winner, and Rick Vanosdall, who, like Jorgenson, once oversaw science instruction for the Mesa, Arizona school district—explain an innovative method for teaching science to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. Jorgenson, Cleveland, and Vandosall advocate an active pedagogy, where students formulate hypotheses and test them experimentally, rather than the common, passive, reading-based science instruction. The book includes ten specific suggestions for hands-on scientific experiments, described by a School Library Journal contributor as "developmentally appropriate and engaging," around which teachers can build lesson plans that encourage students to do science rather than merely read about it in a textbook. Doing Good Science in Middle School also features explanations of how middle-school students think and learn, explains why teaching students how to ask and answer questions scientifically is at the heart of teaching good science, and presents suggestions for integrating other subjects, including literacy and mathematics, into science classrooms. The result, wrote a Journal of College Science Teaching contributor, is "a comprehensive practitioner's guide."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Journal of College Science Teaching, July-August, 2005, review of Doing Good Science in Middle School: A Practical Guide to Inquiry-Based Instruction, p. S5.

NEA Today, March, 2005, "Making Science Class Count," p. 60.

School Library Journal, April, 2005, review of Doing Good Science in Middle School, p. S77.

ONLINE

National Science Teachers Association Web site, http://www.nsta.org/ (September 28, 2005), "New Book from NTSA Press Addresses Challenges of Keeping Middle Schoolers Tuned in to Science."