The 2012 ISDDE Prize
for Excellence in Educational Design

The International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE) recently announced the winner of the organization’s fifth annual design awards, known as “the Eddies,” to recognize excellence in design of educational products and materials in science or mathematics. The 2012 award winner and recipient of a $10,000 prize is Jacqueline Barber, Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, for leadership of the design of Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading. Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading is a curriculum developed through a rigorous process to produce innovative materials with great demonstrated impact on students, teachers, and educational designers around the world.

Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading, developed by a team led by Jacqueline Barber, is a curriculum for Grades 2 through 5, that integrates science and literacy to provide access to deep science knowledge, academic language, and powerful skills and strategies in both literacy and science.

A good foundational exposure to science in elementary school is critical, but science is often squeezed out of the curriculum because of the increasing pressure to improve student performance in mathematics and reading. In addition, students are typically taught to read using fictional texts, which fails to prepare them for the diet of informational texts they will encounter throughout their schooling and beyond.

Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading addresses both problems through the use of carefully developed informational readers that work together with simple but powerful science investigations providing students with a purpose and motivation to read and gather evidence from science texts as they work to construct explanations about the natural world. In so doing, students are immersed in learning key science concepts and practices while also improving their reading abilities.

The program and its components are used by thousands of teachers in 42 states (within the United States) and in at least nine additional countries; children, teachers, and school principals love the program.

For the past 30 years, Jacqueline Barber has been involved in K-12 science and mathematics education, in curriculum and professional development. She has authored numerous science and mathematics curriculum units including a handbook on curriculum assessment. Currently she serves as the Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science and Director of its Curriculum Center. In this role she is responsible for leading the Hall in addressing shared issues and concerns related to curriculum development, curriculum implementation, and assessment.